Poll watchers needed in Milwaukee (BBV concern)

[dragonlady]

If you can help out with poll watching for the Democratic Party in Milwaukee, call Mayisha Ward at 414-874-5140. They especially want enough lawyers to cover every polling place (about 200), although nonlawyers are also welcome.

Here's an extra reason to volunteer, if only for the final hours of voting: We must have someone gather the vote totals from each polling place when the machines are opened after the close of voting. I won't go into the whole BBV thing, but if the total announced by the Election Commission doesn't match the combined totals from the wards, we need to know that.

Please volunteer, so there can be somebody at each of the polling places to get a complete set of data and be prepared in case a problem arises.

[Lefta Dissenter]

1. Which organization

are you working with?

(I'm emailing this to my sister, who is an infrequent DUer, and who lives in Milwaukee)

[dragonlady]

2. Independent gadfly

I've been concerned about the BBV aspects of our optical scan machines for a while now. Some investigation and thought turned up the possibility of guarding against tampering by collecting the totals at the ward level. After mentioning this to several people connected to the various campaigns, I was really glad to see that they are trying to put someone in each polling place so this can be done. It's part of the effort to help voters exercise their rights and find out which wards need more GOTV attention throughout the day.

[Lefta Dissenter]

3. You might want to consider

checking out http://cv.votewatch.us/ It would be nice to coordinate, if possible, so as to avoid duplication of efforts!

Welcome to Votewatch!
Closing Voter CampignVotewatch, a non-profit, non-partisan election monitoring organization, is recruiting citizen volunteers to act as "Closing Voters" to provide data for the first-ever monitoring of raw vote counts produced by electronic voting machines at precincts across the country. Data collected by Votewatch volunteers will then be compared with unofficial centralized vote counts produced at the county level on election night.

In order for the comparison of precinct-generated totals and centrally-tabulated totals to be valid, it is necessary to collect precinct totals from ALL of the precincts in a county. Thus, Votewatch is also looking for individuals and groups who can mobilize sufficient volunteers to cover every precinct in their respective county.

How can I get involved?
How Does It Work?I want to help!


Volunteer as a Closing Voter County Manager

If you are able to mobilize the required number of volunteers in your county, please send an email to Greg Dinger.

Volunteer as a Closing Voter
Closing Voters vote at their usual polling location shortly before closing time and then wait for the poll workers to post the final vote tally.

Closing Voters will then record their precinct's final vote tally for the Federal races (President, Senate, House), and post the vote totals to the Votewatch web site. When possible, it will be helpful if volunteers can send along a digital photograph of the printed precint totals, for analysis and comparison with unofficial totals released by the county on election night. Closing Voters are needed nationwide and must be available for 90 minutes on Election Day.
To learn more about how this will work, and to sign up, please review this page.

lots more at the site, including other ways to help with the election

[goddess40]

4. BBV aspects of our optical scan machines ?

Could you explain your concerns, we vote using optical scanners and I always thoght they were fairly safe.

[sybylla]

5. It involves the ballots cast versus ballots counted/vote tally

The tallying software is the same software the BBV machines use and is subject to the same hanky panky possibilities.

In some counties, especially larger counties, the ballots are scanned at the precint and the totals sent electronically to the county/city clerks office. I believe this is where the hanky panky can take place.

In my county, all the ballots are delivered to the clerks office and scanned and tallied there. We're a small county so tallying and auditing isn't complicated. And I know there are both Dems and repugs working in the office who will make sure every vote gets counted.

Auditing in the larger cities is the problem when scanning takes places locally and the results are sent to the clerks. So BBV poll watching makes sure the final tally is a complete tally, that nothing is lost and nothing is gained.

[AllyCat]

6. Yup! That's the problem

The Marksense optical scanners are a great tool. They are easy to use with no hanging chads, improperly completed paper ballots, butterfly effect, or electronic vote changing like I have ALREADY heard of in NM. The problem is that once they results are sent to the county central tabulator, the convenient for Repubs. Diebold system takes the Marksense results and um, uh, records and adds them. This is indeed where the illegalities start as the number of votes added into the tabulator can be changed by insertions or deletions of two digits of code. Up to 2M votes at a crack.

[ClassWarrior]

7. I've volunteered my day to the K/E campaign...

...and I've told them I'm interested in poll watching. Did it for Gwen Moore's campaign in the primary.

24.

[dragonlady]

8. Thank you for volunteering!

It's so important to make sure things go smoothly on election day, especially since turnout will be so high, although the early voting will help take some of the pressure off. And if every ward is covered, we can be confident of the vote totals.

I did poll watching for Gwen too.

[Bushfire]

9. Here's the dirt...

After a ballot is given to the voter, it is marked and cast into one of 205 voting machines throughout the city. Inside each machine, a small, preprogrammed, battery-powered device called a "prom-pack" reads the information from the ballot and transmits it to a memory chip.(dirty secret - precint captain can deny observers the right to verify totals at the ward, I know from experience...)

snip

(after the polls close) A poll worker will then read, out loud, the information on the tapes from each machine, which includes the total number of ballots cast on the machine, the total number of ballots cast in each ward and the total number of votes received by each candidate on the ballot.

The prom-packs, tapes and ballots are then taken to four remote sites where "smart pack readers" - laptop devices that look like small, metallic suitcases - transmit the data from the prom-packs, via telephone line, to computers at the Election Commission at City Hall.

snip

Of course, occasionally things don't work quite right.

more...

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/apr04/220522.asp

If these totals are being transmitted by modem to a central computer, they could be at risk by hackers. The central tabulater can also be hacked from insiders, or outsiders if they have the password. Former Milwaukee Election Commissioner Julietta Henry said only she had the password, but someone in her office said that she too had the password along with an ES&S representative. Mayor Tom Barrett has denied looking into this for me. Milwaukee uses ES&S Optech Eagle P-III optical scan machines, founded with the help of the Urosevich brothers & Chuck Hagel. Poll watching is great, but stick around for the totals. The totals need to be verified to what City Hall gets for results, and auditing of some of the precints must be open to the public to match the memory chip from each ward. Remember WI State Law requires any recount be requested by the losing candidate (not the public), and only if within a certain losing percentage. I will volunteer in some capacity, but don't know what ward or group I'll align myself with yet.

[goddess40]

10. our ballots aren't counted until the polls close

they go into ballot boxes during the day and when the polls close and everyone has finished voting. The poll workers then count them and verify their numbers against their books. (They also have to open all the absentee ballots) After all this is done they take the ballot box to the court house for the counting to begin.

It's going to be a long day for our poll workers, who's average age is 73.

[dragonlady]

11. Great information

You show exactly why it's important to get those original figures so there is something to compare the city totals with. There are ways to compromise even our supposedly safe optical scan system.

By the way, in the polling place I covered for the primary, I got to copy numbers from the internal machine tape, but the poll workers did not read any totals out loud. Is that supposed to be a required step?
I hadn't heard about it.

It would be really nice if the public could have a clear, complete, accessible explanation of how all this should work, but maybe that's asking too much.