------------------------------------------------------------ Black Box Voting : 1-on-1 Consulting Area: How about these ideas for citizen actions? ------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by BL on Thursday, October 12, 2006:
There are several problems with parallel elections from an evidential standpoint. Here are the ones that I can think of:
Unless everyone puts their name on the parallel election ballot, you can't even possibly verify that they actually did and/or were eligible to vote in the real election (for a court). And if you have no ability to check people against the poll books, even with this, you still don't know.
Unless they notarize a statement that is then stapled to their parallel election vote, they can't witness to their ballot being counted correctly in the parallel election (for a court). (V. Kurt B. says you don't get to look at the poll books in a recount in PA.)
There is insufficient proof that how they remember their vote for the parallel election is actually how they cast it(for a court).
There is insufficient proof that parallel elections will have sufficient participation from all parts of the electorate to be representative of the actual election (for a court).
Despite these flaws, I think that one thing a parallel election can do is to show that certain people who intended to, and had a right to vote were not allowed to do so. Being 100-200 feet from an elections office and taking the time to fill out the parallel election ballot and notarize it with the notes of why you weren't allowed to vote should represent great evidence for charges of voter disenfranchisement. It is no longer hearsay or a generality without specifices anymore.
So, as long as these ballots are kept to a separate tally (not difficult to do), and a person makes all efforts to vote by any single method that he's finally allowed, I think Dan is wrong about this. He is right in that you should vote the provisional ballot if that's all you're allowed.
------------------------------------------------------------ Black Box Voting : 'Dear Black Box ... ' -- 1-on-1 Consulting Area: How about these ideas for citizen actions? ------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by Bev Harris on Thursday, October 12, 2006:
One thing I have seen happening from parallel elections is a very strong increase in the number of citizens participating in oversight. They often go on to add more activities to their plate once they have had the opportunity to participate in parallel elections.
I think at this point we need to truly embody the "swarm" method and do many different strategies at once, because the nature of creative problem solving is that innovative solutions are often a mutation of early efforts.
Posted with permission from Bev Harris, Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Bev Harris is executive director of Black Box Voting, Inc. an advocacy group committed to restoring citizen oversight to elections.
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