EJF Newsletter — Basic voting principles — Will your vote count or will a computer eat it?
Overview
Another election is upon us and in Colorado it would appear the county clerks have all eaten loco weed.
Despite the long history election fraud in American elections between 1742 and 2004 documented by Tracy Campbell in Deliver the Vote, by Andrew Gumbel in Steal This Vote, among many others including the Equal Justice Foundation, we are barraged by propaganda telling us how safe and accurate our elections are now that we've largely converted to electronic vote counting machines.
But only the deaf and blind could possibly be unaware of the innumerable problems with computer voting documented in every corner of the country since HAVA poured billions of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of companies (crooks?) like Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia, Hart Intercivic, and others. Yet election officials continue to tell us these machines, about which they know next to nothing, are safe, secure, and accurate despite all evidence to the contrary. And while virtually every government agency in the country has had their computers hacked, supposedly election computers and voter registration databases have strangely been immune from such attacks.
Is it simply a coincidence then that after more than a century of using the Australian secret ballot as a voting method to ensure that a voter's choices in an election are anonymous that Colorado county clerks now claim that "secret ballot" means that only they, and their voting machine contractors of course, can actually examine the ballots? Colorado county clerks are keeping the courts busy insisting that dire events will happen if citizens are actually allowed to examine ballots after they have been cast and counted.
And a "recount" has now become, at most, a matter of simply running the ballots back through the computer-controlled optical scanner again, or asking the DRE's to print out another copy of their original vote tabulation. The very thought of citizens and the press actually conducting a hand recount of ballots is anathema to the witch doctors who pass themselves off as election officials in these trying times.
Given the innumerable "glitches" associated with these voting machines in elections all across the country over the past decade, it is clear why county clerks don't want citizens to be able to actually verify how ballots are counted. And when does a "glitch" counting ballots become election fraud? Or reveal gross incompetence of a county clerk?
We've suffered through a decade of gross mismanagement at all levels of government. Isn't it time we took our elections back? For many years now the Equal Justice Foundation has put forth the Basic Voting Principles reproduced below. Use these principles to measure how elections are run in your county or parish and publish, or allow us to publish the errors, mistakes (or fraud), and incompetence you encounter in the 2011 mid-term election now underway. It isn't too late to try and ensure honest and accurate elections in 2012.
Only you can keep computers operated by technologically-challenged election officials and nefarious contractors from eating your vote!
Charles E. Corry, Ph.D., F.G.S.A.
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Basic Voting Principles
There are fundamental and universal principles of any election espoused by the Equal Justice Foundation. No equipment, process, or jurisdiction may compromise these principles without endangering election integrity.
Secret ballot
The right to vote privately on an anonymous ballot is guaranteed in most state constitutions.
• No election official, process, ballot, or voting equipment shall make it possible to determine or modify by any means, direct or indirect, how an individual votes in any race, on any issue, for any party, or any candidate.
• No election equipment or process shall make it possible by any means for any voter or election official to market or sell a vote or ballots to any individual, group, or party.
• No election process or equipment shall make it possible to influence a voter as to who or what they vote for at any time while the ballot is in possession of the voter.
One citizen, one vote
The integrity and validity of an election fundamentally depends on the principle that each qualified citizen can vote once, and only once in an election.
• Each voter must be individually identified by the most reliable means available, preferably face-to-face with an election judge.
• All reasonable precautions shall be taken to ensure ballots cannot be duplicated or fraudulent ballots cast in an election.
• The election results must be publicly repeatable and reproducible by independent means.
• For verification, poll books and election audit data must be publicly available at no or minimal cost.
• All ballots for a given election, in whatever form, must be accounted for from the time they are designed, generated, or printed until the statutory limit on storage has expired, with a public audit available at any time during this entire period.
• Ballot counting shall be publicly visible and conducted by at least two people of opposing political parties.
• All recounts of ballots in an election shall be publicly done by methods and individuals from at least two opposing political parties independent of the initial count
• Voter intent shall always be determined by at least two election judges and subject to public verification.
Voter eligibility
It is the responsibility of everyone involved in an election to ensure that only eligible voters are allowed to vote, and each voter is only allowed to vote in those races and on those issues they are eligible to vote for.
Principles affecting voter eligibility include, but are not limited to establishing:
• The voter is a citizen of the nation, state, and local jurisdiction in which they are voting.
• The voter exists, i.e., is corporeal, and is of age.
• The voter is not eligible to vote in any other jurisdiction on the same issues in the same election.
• The voter has not been convicted of a crime, or had their citizenship revoked, that makes them ineligible to vote in the election.
• The voter is not voting by any means in another jurisdiction in the same election.
• The voter is presented a ballot that allows them to vote on all races, candidates, and issues.
• The voter is presented a ballot that contains only the races, candidates, and issues on which they are eligible to vote.
Transparency
All ballots shall be counted under visible public scrutiny with at least one representative of each major party present and participating at all times during the counting.
All poll books, ballots, testing, procedures, programs, equipment, hardware, connections, transmission facilities or methods, and storage facilities, shall be open to public inspection and review prior to and after any election.
Votes accurately recorded and counted
All processes, procedures, rules, personnel, and equipment used in an election shall work to standards and tests that demonstrably ensure all votes are accurately recorded and counted. All standards, tests, counting methods, and results shall be available for and subject to public review.
• All ballots shall be visibly counted by the most accurate and reliable means available and these methods shall be documented and approved by all affected parties prior to the election, including public inspection.
• There shall exist an independent and documented means of publicly verifying and recounting ballots in all elections.
• Before casting their ballot a voter shall have a means of ensuring the ballot is marked and cast as they intend and all spoiled ballots shall be accounted for.
• All reasonable precautions shall be taken to preserve all ballots for the statutory period mandated.
• Every reasonable method shall be used to provide ways and means for the voter, election officials, poll watchers, and public to verify that ballots are accurately recorded and counted.
• All individuals involved in conducting an election shall be identified, their citizenship established, their criminal history investigated, and a brief description of their role and what access they have been granted shall be documented and publicly available.
• All poll books, audits, rules, methods, procedures, documents, instruction and training manuals, test methods and results, problem reports, and other pertinent election information shall be publicly available to the extent possible without violating an individual voter's privacy.
• In cases where election fraud or equipment malfunctions are at issue in a court of law, no person or entity shall be entitled to claim immunity or proprietary interests as a defense, or to prevent examination of any equipment, software, components, processes, or methods thereof including any coding or processes used in the election. However, the court may mandate that anyone who examines or has access to a manufacturer's proprietary information sign a binding nondisclosure agreement.
Reliability
Voting equipment and processes must be demonstrably reliable and accurate.
• All equipment used in an election shall demonstrably and verifiably be reliably capable of performing the functions for which it is being used during the entire election period.
• All ballots, equipment, procedures, and processes used in an election shall be certified to appropriate public standards that ensure the equipment and processes perform the functions for which it is being used in the election in the environment where the election is being held, and the certification shall be publicly available.
• Adequate safeguards against all known and preventable accidents, intrusions, and disruptions of an election shall be taken and processes specified to recover from such events when they do occur.
• An independent public audit, or canvass of the election shall be conducted by representatives of at least two major parties and such candidates and citizens who wish to participate and the results published.
• An audit, or canvass must certify that the number of ballots counted does not exceed the number of ballots cast in all races and on all issues in each precinct, and that the number of ballots cast does not exceed the number of registered voters in each precinct.
Note that these principles are available as a flyer on the EJF web site, along with many others.
| EJF Home | More newsletters | Get EJF newsletter | Find Help | Join the EJF | Comments? |
Issues The Equal Justice Foundation Deals With
| Civilization | Families and Marriage | Domestic Violence | Domestic Violence Against Men in Colorado | Emerson story |
| Prohibition & War On Drugs | Vote Fraud & Election Issues |