David Earnhardt, filmmaker, "Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections"
If they are in districts that have opt-scan voting, they should demand random audits of at least 5 percent. If they have paperless touch-screen voting, they should do exit poll-style audits. Chain of custody of paper ballots needs to be completely secure.
Candidates need to speak out on this issue -- both to voters and the media.
They need to make this issue -- the proper counting of all votes -- a part of their platform.
Simon Ardizzone, filmmaker, "Hacking Democracy"
You can't protect candidates from vote manipulation. Thanks to the mighty mess that is the U.S. election system, there is no prophylactic. However, you can encourage candidates to behave rationally when it happens, and you can encourage them to play ball with election reform groups.
No one can ensure that these machines count accurately, short of a full hand recount. However, I say this: video the close of the polls! The printout of the optical scanners is the forensic evidence of the vote that is least likely to be compromised. This is particularly true given the recent product advisory from Premier Election Systems (formerly Diebold Election Systems) admitting that their memory cards lose votes during uploads to GEMS central tabulators.
So every candidate must make sure that the precinct results match the final results, and that means an independent record of the poll tapes printed out on the night and signed by the precinct staff, not the re-printed ones that often turn up during recounts!
Video records are cheap, easy to do, and provide one other very interesting source of information. If certain types of hack have been carried out, particularly if pre-programmed results are re-written from hidden files on the memory cards to the vote counters themselves, then that takes time.
Video works at 1/30th of a second and so it may provide evidence if there is a clear disparity between the time it takes from the ender card going through the scanner, through to the time when the printer starts to record the results. It's a long shot, but this could be important evidence.
Observers should post these videos on You Tube, where citizens can then look at all the results from all the precincts in their county. And then count them themselves.
David Jefferson, Livermore National Laboratories
The fact is that candidates are not in much of a position to do anything other than ask for recounts or sue. Anything they may try to do is completely undercut because it always appears self-serving and partisan, or will at least be painted that way. Candidates are victims of bad voting systems like the rest of us.
David Swanson, Democrats.com, AfterDowningStreet.org
They can raise the issue in the media and make it part of their campaigns in a few ways. First, they can encourage election day volunteers, observers, videographers, and exit pollsters, organizing efforts directly or assisting organizations not affiliated with any campaign, including encouraging the media to produce and release unadjusted exit poll results. They can plan to spend the day themselves setting an example as an observer. Second, they can make the issue of honest and verifiable elections part of their platform for policy changes. Ideally, they would support working toward changes in regulations, laws, and the Constitution to establish an individual Constitutional right to vote and to have all votes publicly and locally counted in a manner that can be repeated and verified if questioned, and a ban on private companies overseeing any vote counting. Third, they can support ongoing efforts to investigate past questionable elections anywhere in the country.
Where possible, request audits and recounts. Announce ahead of time that you will do so as a matter of principle. Observe. Videotape.
Don Siegelman, former Governor, Alabama
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