Further indications of problems with the vote count are already coming in from multiple sources, including incident reports from voters and election observers. Among these are indications that disenfranchisement targeting communities likely to have a high proportion of 'no' votes on Proposition 8 led to huge numbers of provisional ballots being cast. Because each provisional ballot must be individually determined to be qualified before counting, hundreds of thousands throughout the state remain uncounted to date.
Hundreds of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots also remain uncounted (see above link). When the initial counting is complete, it is certainly possible that the results of Proposition 8 will be reversed. But we can't sit around waiting to find out.
Right now, in election offices in every county, procedures that affect the election results are underway. While the votes are tabulated by computers that have been shown again and again to be riggable and hackable, to drop votes, flip votes, break down and all in all produce untrustworthy election results, some of the election processes can and must be observed by the public. These include:
- Mandated 1% manual count of all paper ballots cast (this increases to 10% for any race that is within 0.5% of a tie in a given county)
- Mandated 100% manual count of 'paper trails' from DRE/touchscreen voting machines
- Reconciliation of number of votes with number of voters, and
- Auditing of other processes to determine accurate counting.
We at Velvet Revolution are recruiting volunteers to observe at county election offices beginning immediately. Volunteers will be trained via conference call this Sunday, November 16, at 4 p.m. To sign up for training, email us with your name, phone number, and county or counties where you would be willing to volunteer (see mail to link at bottom of VR post). We ask that all volunteers be prepared to give at least four hours over the next couple of weeks. We hope that most will be able to volunteer significantly more time. If you want to volunteer and are unable to attend Sunday's telephone training session, give us your contact number so we can tell you if there is another training opportunity. The training will be conducted by Tom Courbat, founder of SAVE R VOTE (Riverside County) and Emily Levy of Velvet Revolution.
Please note that this training is specific to California and to observing many of the auditing processes set up here by Secretary of State Debra Bowen following her Top to Bottom Review of California's voting systems. However, we encourage voters everywhere to flock to their local election offices and observe post-elections processes. Democracy cannot take care of itself. It needs us. It is us. In California and around the nation, our names are being called right now. Come on down!
Sign up for free volunteer training in California today! (Your long distance phone charges apply.)
- Print this flyer, copy it, cut it, and circulate it at tomorrow's protests!
- Post a link to this blog item on your MySpace page or wherever you go on the internet.
- Report problems you had voting in California immediately and confidentially to ALL of these election integrity/election protection efforts:
www.WorkTheVoteLA.org
1-866-OUR-VOTE
1-866-MYVOTE1
Don't Give Up -- Give Time!
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