A Modest Proposal re: BBV-- Mark, and Save, Your Sample Ballot.

[Warren DeMontague]

Yeah, I realize it's not much. And the idea of millions of people doing this is probably not realistic. But, hear me out.

Here in Northern California we get a sample ballot that matches the ballot we get on election day. The idea is for people to mark the thing before they go, so they don't spend a lot of time futzing around in the booth- they can just copy what they've done on the sample ballot.

I don't know if the folks who will be voting on these Diebold machines get a paper sample ballot as well.. but late last night I was thinking-- well, what if all those people, particularly ones concerned about their votes being 'eaten', hung on to those paper sample ballots. Then, if the numbers were horribly f*cked up or smelled funny, at least you would have X amount of people with some kind of written verification that they intended to vote a certain way. Would it prove anything? Not legally. But it would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we were being deliberately screwed- and we could deal with that information accordingly. On a national or state level this is totally impractical. But get down to the district or precinct level, and if you have Diebold reporting only, say, 200 votes for Kerry, and you have 600 people show up waving these sample ballots saying "Screw you, we ALL voted for the guy"... I dunno, it could be a powerful indictment.