In many cases, being a poll worker is a paid position. It also gives you the right to see---and document---what is going on when the votes are cast. If partisan "observers" show up to harass voters, you can drive them away. If voters are being short-changed paper ballots, you can be there to provide them. If poll workers are pitching provisional ballots in the trash, you will be there to retrieve them. If voters are forced to vote provisionally instead of on a regular paper ballot, you can correct the problem. If election officials try to close the polls early, you can be there to keep them open---and to document those who are violating the law.
In many cases, as a poll worker, you will also be party to counting the votes. Bring your cameras. And your cell phones.
3) AFTER THE POLLS CLOSE: BE A VOTE COUNT OBSERVER
Poll workers have the right -- even the obligation -- to help with the vote count. If you are a poll worker, you can observe and record how the ballots are treated after the polls close. If the votes have been cast on electronic machines, you can do your best to penetrate the corporate control of these machines of mass vote theft. More on that later.
Both major parties are by law allowed to send observers to watch the counting of votes. So is the media.
If you are not already established as a poll worker, you can file with one of the parties to join their vote count monitoring team.
You might also register as a representative of a media team assigned to observe the vote count. In either capacity, you have a right to access the vote counting.
In locations where electronic machines are in use, your vote count observation duties will be complicated. You would do well to thoroughly verse yourself in the ins-and-outs of these hackable, unreliable machines. Your abilities to penetrate the deliberately opaque wall surrounding these vote theft devices may be limited. But anything is better than nothing.
We need to put videographers at each polling location to document any problems and to interview voters about irregularities they may experience. Pictures are definitely worth a thousand words as the "video the vote" project proved in the 2004 election.
On weekend of September 26-8, we will co-convene a national conference in Columbus, which we plan to web-cast (see www.freepress.org). We will offer workshops in how to do all the above, and to crack, as best we can, the election theft machines that are called e-voting devices.
We cannot guarantee success. But we have already seen what can happen when elections are stolen. And we doubt the nation can survive it happening again.
--
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, co-convenors of September's National Conference to Protect the 2008 Election, are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, which is at at www.freepress.org, where their new AS GOES OHIO will also soon be available.
In many cases, as a poll worker, you will also be party to counting the votes. Bring your cameras. And your cell phones.
3) AFTER THE POLLS CLOSE: BE A VOTE COUNT OBSERVER
Poll workers have the right -- even the obligation -- to help with the vote count. If you are a poll worker, you can observe and record how the ballots are treated after the polls close. If the votes have been cast on electronic machines, you can do your best to penetrate the corporate control of these machines of mass vote theft. More on that later.
If you are not already established as a poll worker, you can file with one of the parties to join their vote count monitoring team.
You might also register as a representative of a media team assigned to observe the vote count. In either capacity, you have a right to access the vote counting.
In locations where electronic machines are in use, your vote count observation duties will be complicated. You would do well to thoroughly verse yourself in the ins-and-outs of these hackable, unreliable machines. Your abilities to penetrate the deliberately opaque wall surrounding these vote theft devices may be limited. But anything is better than nothing.
We need to put videographers at each polling location to document any problems and to interview voters about irregularities they may experience. Pictures are definitely worth a thousand words as the "video the vote" project proved in the 2004 election.
On weekend of September 26-8, we will co-convene a national conference in Columbus, which we plan to web-cast (see www.freepress.org). We will offer workshops in how to do all the above, and to crack, as best we can, the election theft machines that are called e-voting devices.
We cannot guarantee success. But we have already seen what can happen when elections are stolen. And we doubt the nation can survive it happening again.
--
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, co-convenors of September's National Conference to Protect the 2008 Election, are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, which is at at www.freepress.org, where their new AS GOES OHIO will also soon be available.
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