On Tuesday night, after the election debacle in
Montgomery County, Maryland, I went to the Board of
Elections office. I was trying to gain access to the
server area, to observe the uploading of the memory
card data from our paperless touchscreen Diebold
voting machines. I was not successful.
However, while I was waiting, I noticed that a
substantial group of Republicans, with a Party guide,
was at the Board of Elections that night. They were
being instructed on the Board's role in the election
night process. They were there to observe the
delivery of equipment and tallies to the Board from
the precincts. There was no similar organized group
of Democrats.
This is the fourth election cycle in which Democratic
voters will face well-organized, well-funded efforts
at vote suppression. This will be in addition to the
institutional implementation of state laws around
voter IDs and voter registration purges. These vote
suppression efforts are a separate issue from the
flaws and vulnerabilities in electronic voting.
Yet, among the many emails Democrats have been
receiving from the DCCC, the DSCC, and the DNC, they
have not received a single message about how they can
go about protecting their right to vote. They have no
instructions for ways to guarantee that their vote
will be recorded and counted as they intended. There
is no national Democratic monitoring effort that
Democrats can use to report voter intimidation or
problems at the polls. This is the situation inspite
of the best effort from activists, during the DNC
Summer Meeting in Chicago several weeks ago, to secure
such a system.
organize monitoring efforts, in the weeks remaining
before the November 7 election. Is this any way to
run the Democratic Party?
Sincerely,
Mary Howe Kiraly
Bethesda, Maryland
