Victory for election protection; Swiss system

[Evan Daniel Ravitz <evan@xxxxxxxx>]

Election Issues <http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19>

A monumental victory for the election protection movement
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
November 8, 2006

The real winner in the November 7 election is the grassroots voter
protection movement. 

That the well-oiled, well-funded Rove/Bush theft machine lost control of the
US House with the Senate as close as it is says just one thing: somebody was
watching. In 2006, that would be thousands of volunteer grassroots activists
who left no stone unturned to expose rigged voting machines, Jim Crow
registration roadblocks, trashed provisional ballots, manipulated absentee
voting processes, and much more. 

A nationwide movement has been born to apply the lessons of the stolen
elections of 2000, 2002 and 2004. In the lead-up to 2006, activists and
independent experts scrutinized voting machines and electoral processes as
never before. Mainstream media reports from the New York Times to CNN's Lou
Dobbs to hundreds of radio talk shows finally paid attention to "glitches"
and "problems" and "long lines" and "disputes" that just an election cycle
ago were dismissed as "business as usual" or the stuff of conspiracy
theory. 

At least six major reports have now warned of the hackability of electronic
voting machines. More than 90% of the American public has expressed concern
about the sanctity of the US electoral system. At least two state governors
have called for electronic voting machines to be discarded in favor of a
return to paper ballots. 

As we write, in Montana the fate of the U.S. Senate rests on a hand count
after a software failure on voting machines in a few remaining precincts. 

The impact? There is no way the 2006 election would not have been stolen
without a concerted 50-state effort to guarantee otherwise. 

In Ohio, an unprecedented project by five statewide Green, Libertarian and
independent candidates dispersed scores of election observers throughout the
state placing them inside key county boards of elections and precincts. 

A classic case comes from central Ohio, "scene of the crime" for the 2004
election. In the 15th Congressional District, election protection attorney,
Cliff Arnebeck, was initially turned away from voting due to lack of "proper
I.D," even though he presented a valid Ohio driver's license and proof of
his current address. 

Arnebeck serves as lead attorney in the King Lincoln lawsuit that has won
preservation of the Ohio 2004 ballots and a number of key victories
regarding election protection. After correcting the precinct officials
through a call to the County Prosecutoršs office, Arnebeck learned upon
arriving at his office that, hundreds of voters were being wrongly forced to
show various forms of personal identification. Arnebeck called the Secretary
of Statešs lawyers and Justin Letts, the law clerk to US District Judge
Marbley. Soon after the SOS issued a new directive confirming that a valid
drivers license need not contain a current address. Election observers
documented a staggering percent of voters who were being forced to cast
provisional ballots. Provisionals are notoriously easy for GOP Secretary of
State J. Kenneth Blackwell to pitch or now delete from the e-voting
machines. More than 16,000 of them, mostly on paper, remain uncounted from
2004. 

Clearly, this was set up to be a stolen cakewalk for incumbent Congresswoman
Deborah Pryce (R-15th), fourth ranking House Republican and a close Bush
ally. 

Instead, Pryce's alleged margin of victory is now less than 4,000 votes.
Rather than conceding, challenger Mary Jo Kilroy has vowed to fight it out
until the last ballot is counted. A Democratic poll watcher at the Ohio
Student Union at Ohio State University estimated that as many as 50% of the
students may have been forced to vote provisional ballots. These student
voters are in the heart of the undecided race in the 15th district, and
early reports indicate there are 20-40,000 uncounted e-provisional voters in
that race. 

Around the country, races in at least eight states are still under extreme
scrutiny. Lawsuits are being prepared, video tape reviewed, testimony
collected, reports compiled. Numerous eyewitness accounts have been filed at
democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, with CommonCause and a wide range of other election
protection web, phone and legal operations. Both Democrats and Republicans
who might earlier have meekly conceded are now holding out until the very
last vote is recounted. 

This is new to American politics. In years gone by, elections have been
stolen and the populace---and even candidates, like John Kerry in
2004---have shrugged their shoulders. 

No more. Team Bush/Rove has taught the grassroots that our electoral process
cannot be taken for granted. 

One major, hopefully temporary, casualty in 2006 has been exit polling. Exit
polls have become the most reliable overall monitor on election outcomes.
The are regularly within 0.1% of the official vote count in Germany. In
2004, they showed clearly that John Kerry won Ohio and the national popular
vote. They've been used to guarantee and even overturn dubious results in
Ukraine, Mexico, ex-Soviet Georgia, the Philippines and more. 

But in 2006 the major networks did their best to lock up exit polls results
that might have embarrassed the White House. Instead, the exit poll results
were impounded under lock and key, to be released to the public only after
the election, and after "experts" massage the data to make it match official
vote counts. To this day, the core data from the 2004 exit polls has yet to
be released to the public. 

This cannot be allowed to stand. In the upcoming 2008 election, exit polls
must be made fully public well before the final vote counts are announced.
They must be funded to one percent accuracy or better, and their raw data
must be a matter of open public record. 

In the interim, the science of election protection will advance and spread.
There is still no reliable way to monitor electronic voting machines, whose
computer codes are still deemed private property, and held in secret. Before
2008, this practice must be abolished. As the Rev. Jesse Jackson has put it,
there can be no public elections on privately controlled machines. 

A return to paper ballots is the bottom line. The color-coded, multi-shaped
Swiss sequencing ballots would work perfectly fine here in the U.S., and
would save the nation billions of dollars, as well as the hard uncertainty
that surrounds our electoral process. 

But however we cut it, there has been a sea change in the election process. 

As Americans, we have too long taken for granted the right to vote and have
our votes counted. 

Now we know we have to fight for that right. And that doing so has already
helped turn the tide of American politics. 

--
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of
WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, just published by The New Press. Fitrakis and
Wasserman are of counsel and a plaintiff in the King Lincoln lawsuit.
Fitrakis was an independent candidate for governor of Ohio, endorsed by the
Green Party. Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is
available at www.solartopia.org <http://www.solartopia.org> . Read more of
their work at http://freepress.org.