Our primary goal is to ascertain how a precinct voted in the official election
And to celebrate democracy INTRODUCTION
Democracy in the U.S. is under siege. Note the bipartisan passage of the USA PATRIOT Act. Note that secret control of US elections is maintained by judicial support. Note that corporate-controlled media fails to fully report the insecurity of electronic voting systems. "Democide" is under way.
To assert our inalienable right to be self-governed, democracy advocates around the globe agree to nonviolently evolve today's culture. One peaceful way to implement democracy is to create parallel institutions, which stand to fill the power vacuum created by public rejection of corrupt institutions.
Citizens concerned with election integrity have begun developing and implementing free and honest elections in their own states. We do this by holding Parallel Elections (PE). This manual was created, and is being revised with each PE experience, to help others run PEs in Ohio, and around the nation.
Today, all voting is in peril, with the use of computers to record or tabulate the vote:
• There are 120 ways to hack the vote on a computer; there are 5 ways to hack paper ballots; • Courts across the country, in case after case, support the partisan administration of elections and block citizen efforts to oversee elections and conduct meaningful recounts; and, • In Ohio, the Chief Election Officer is running for Governor, changing "Administrative Rules" in ways that impact vote totals.
See the resource list at the back of this document for further reading.
Parallel Elections provide:
• Conclusive, indisputable results by a hand count of paper ballots, • Openness and transparency – anyone can observe the election process, • Non-partisan representation to protect against fraud, • Chain of custody of the ballot box and ballots throughout the process, • A frame on which the modern democracy movement can be sustained, • Peace of mind that the will of your neighbors is accurately known and reported.
Parallel Elections are run:
• By volunteers who donate a shift of time on Election Day • At a minimal cost – about $100 per precinct • 100 feet outside an official polling site • Rain or Shine under a tent • The way elections ought to be run
The material in this manual was prepared from personal experience and these sources:
In 2004, Rady Ananda joined the growing community of citizen journalists. Focused mainly on elections, her blogs also address religious, gender, sexual and racial equality, as well as environmental issues; and are sprinkled with book and film reviews on various topics. She spent most of her working life as a legal investigator for private lawyers, and five years as an editor. She currently serves as a senior editor at OpEdNews.
All material offered here is the property of Rady Ananda, copyright 2006, 2007, 2008. Permission is granted to repost, with proper attribution including the original link.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Tell the truth anyway. Sign this petition: http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/ny_levers_petition
Parallel elections do the job we've been paying elections officials to do, that they haven't been doing.
Like the old saying goes, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. This is a well-planned, tested, effective, and workable tool for implementing democracy in every precinct where people care.
Let's roll!
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Friday, September 15, 2006 at 2:01:26 PM
1 comments
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