Help make sure your vote counts: Ohio Citizens' Parallel Elections

[mod mom]

INVITE TO CITIZENS' PARALLEL ELECTIONS - PLEASE FORWARD

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has confirmed that voting machines have caused problems in recent elections and, in some cases, have affected the outcome.http://reform.house.gov/UploadedFiles/GAO-05-956.pdf

Since, we have voting machines in Ohio, many of us believe that we should check how they are doing.

Many of us are doing citizens’ parallel elections which are non-partisan citizen polls of the voters who have just voted. It is done by secret ballot on one race or issue. We have done this in parts of Ohio twice before, and it is being done in other states. Most voters are very cooperative. After the election, we compare our results with the voting machine totals for the precinct. In our experience, parallel elections help make the elections accurate in the precincts in which they are done.

We will be doing this in Ohio during the Tuesday, May 2 primary. The race we will be polling on is the Ohio Governor’s race.

We have two teams for each precinct consisting of three people each. Some people work with the voters and others help them, as they wish. One team starts in the morning and finishes after lunch, and the second team starts after lunch and works past the end of the election hours to count what votes the voters have given us.

We found it very interesting working with the voters. And we got to know people on our team, and voters, which was fun.


If you would like to help, please send me an email with your name, email address, what county/counties you would like to help in, and which shift you would like–a.m. or p.m.

We would also like to know if you are interested in being a leader in your precinct group. Leaders will get training beforehand in their county of choice.

If you are interested in helping, or have any questions, please contact me at

[e-mail]

Thank you,

Jo Anne Karasek

[Old and In the Way]

1. Very cool idea!

Document results now, so a rigged election will be harder to explain away. I hope you can get the results notarized.

I wonder if this would be a bi-partisan effort? Somehow, I don't see the Ohio Republican Party motivated to want to participate....which is OK, this could be a great voter outreach effort as well.