Notes on information received from diverse sources by the Washington, DC-based ELECTION PROTECTION COMMAND CENTER on November 8, 2016

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Some grassroots notes on Election Day events (Nov. 8, 2016) taken at the ELECTION PROTECTION COMMAND CENTER, a DC-based arm of the National Election Defense Coalition and the newly formed, also DC-based Transformative Justice Coalition [1]

Dixville Notch, NH, is the first precinct in the country to report election results nationwide, beginning its vote count at midnight. With a total of 6 voters, Hillary won handily with 4 votes. Further results in rural NH, gave Trump the lead at 32-2. As a result of the above, the Trump side of things declared victory prematurely, with some supporters sending out notices of a Trump victory. We feared this would discourage people from coming out to vote at all.

An overarching problem yesterday, experienced throughout the country, was the very issue targeted by President Obama in two major speeches: his acceptance speech in 2013 and the SOTU that followed. That was/is LONG LINES, which apart from inconveniencing large numbers of voters, prevents many from voting altogether because of other obligations like work or childcare of both.

Barbara Arnwine, head of the Transformative Justice Coalition as well as its founder (and also founder of ELECTION PROTECTION in 2000 as well as former head of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law ), summed up the principal problems as the long lines and broken optical scanners all over the country--in one place one spoiled ballot caused a scanner to malfunction and stop working. The scanner froze.

Other nationwide problems included flawed registration processes (see below),

Misuse of provisional ballots as official ballots,

Electronic poll books malfunctioned

and, of course, more, as detailed throughout.

Re the long lines, a study commissioned by the President; the resulting report, published a year later in January 2014, may be viewed here, https://www.supportthevoter.gov/files/2014/01/Amer-Voting-Exper-final-draft-01-09-14-508.pdf , offered many practical solutions to the problem but ignored the underlying motivation--discrimination. "Not enough," said the experts. "Not enough." But, along with a report by the Brennan Center published a year later, "America's Voting Machines at Risk," https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/publications/Americas_Voting_Machines_At_Risk.pdf , the warning had gone out that our electronic machinery was just too old to be reliable and the frequent breakdowns were no surprise. The problem was that states could not come up with the money to modernize their systems. Spare parts were ordered in some places, where attainable, to "scotch tape" some problems.

Ballot scanners all over the country malfunctioned or tanked altogether, creating 2-3 hour lines. Voters were told to fill in their ballots anyway and hand them to the poll workers, who would scan them later. Many tore up their ballots in disgust or walked away with their ballots, vitiating their validity altogether if they tried to return them later. In Detroit, this problem wasn't discovered until 11:45 a.m. 75% of the scanners at Jamaica, Queens PS 52 broke down. There will be Judicial Committee hearings on all of the above.

In North Carolina, where purging of the voter lists had occurred, involving thousands of African Americans with "mathematical precision," there had been a court order to add these names back, which was not fulfilled. This is considered a matter for the DoJ to take up.

At one polls location in Harlem, the ramp for handicapped voters and others in need of it was hidden behind the building with no signs to inform voters where it was. There was a line of approximately 200 voters forced to wait in 4 separate lines: once outside, once inside, once to gain access to the four separate precinct tables, and then again to actually scan votes. This was mid-morning, so imagine what it was like during rush hours. In addition, the room was too small to accommodate the number of voters anxious to exercise their right to vote. The poll workers were very kind and sympathetic, my informant told me.

In Loudon County, Virginia, an area inhabited by some newcomers and others who had been there a long time, there was intimidation via open carrying of guns, but no actually shooting incidents. No laws in the Dominion State forbid open carry.

Notices to vote on Wednesday were sent out in Mansfield, Georgia to Democrats.

In Detroit, again, those showing student IDs were put through a multitude of red tape before being allowed to vote.

In one district in Palm Beach County, FL, there were 25 broken scanners. Voters were forced to fill out provisional ballots

Of course, if you showed up at the wrong precinct, fully 12 states won't count your ballot at all; elsewhere you will receive a provisional ballot.

In Pennsylvania, votes flipped when voters attempted to vote a straight-ticket ballot.

In Philadelphia, a busload of voters were tailgated by intimidating private citizens.

There, citizens were to file reports to the DoJ if they saw a person openly carrying a gun

In Utah, tens of thousands of voters were forced to use paper ballots when machinery (DREs?) malfunctioned on their paper-trail-equipped DREs (-:

TRUMP WAS BOOED WHEN HE WAS VIDEO'ED GOING TO THE POLLS TO VOTE FOR HIMSELF (-:

Trump has accused MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, called arguably the smartest pundit on TV, of participating in a conspiracy against him.

One of her listeners suggested federalizing of voting machinery. I'd say, of HCPB (hand-counted paper ballots), since this may leave electronic machinery open to outsider hacking. An "advantage" of our decentralized system, spread over more than ten thousand jurisdictions, was said to be prevention of widespread hacking attempts.

And speaking of this huge number of jurisdictions, as a result of Shelby County vs. Holder, which gutted the most vital portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), the number of DoJ representatives supervising polling activities was down to 501, distributed over 28 precincts. La Dee Dah.

In Durham County in the critical state of North Carolina, malfunctioning machinery catalyzed a last-minute hearing to extend voting hours by an hour and a half, but the mainstream media (MSM) reported statewide results fairly early and mentioned no delays or problems (surprise, surprise). A congressional hearing about this situation was anticipated by the DoJ.

In Alanis County, Georgia, clusters of people harassed voters.

In East Lansing, MI, two Muslim women were barred from voting (Dearborn, MI, just north of Detroit, contains the largest percentage of Muslim voters in the country; a wonderful documentary was made about the lifestyle there--how utterly all-American it is)).

Trump supporters blocked voters in Coral Springs, FL. In Miami-Dade County, they were yelling through megaphones.

In Broward County, FL, thugs' presence was intimidating. Absentee ballots, received a good part of the time from African American voters, were not processed. They found out about this by checking online for records indicating that their votes had been cast. Absentee ballots were "harvested" from mailboxes before the would-be voters could receive them.

MI scanners were plus or minus 2 % inaccurate, 13-14 years old, past warranty intervention. Republican legislators "have their heads in the sand" about this.

About 1/2 of all voter complaints came from Pennsylvania, the state that went for Trump late in the evening after having shown preference for Hillary until then. IDs were demanded even though the governor had vetoed this requirement early in 2014.

The Election Protection hotline, 1-866-OURVOTE, reported 80,000 calls by mid-day, according to ABC News, and 175,000 more were expected before the end of the day.

Staff members of the November 8, 2016, ELECTION PROTECTION COMMAND CENTER included Arnwine; Joel Segal, former counsel for Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and presently board member of the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA); Mike Hersh, Maryland State Coordinator of PDA; Caitlyn Cobb, assistant to Arnwine; Melissa Watkins, legal intern to Arnwine; Marta Steele, affiliated with both the National Election Defense Coalition and PDA, author and editor/writer for Oped News; and volunteers Doris Thomas and Ayo Handy-Kendi.

[1] Note that all specific incidents reported above, unless otherwise attributed, were based on orally delivered reports, received by the Command Center on November 8, 2016.

Authors Website: http://www.wordsunltd.com

Authors Bio:

Marta Steele is an author/editor/blogger who has been writing for Opednews.com since 2006. She is also author of the 2012 book "Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement's Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People's Vote, 2000-2008" (Columbus, Free Press) and a member of the Election Integrity movement since 2001. Her original website, WordsUnLtd.com, first entered the blogosphere in 2003. She recently became a senior editor for Opednews.com. She has in the past taught college and worked as a full-time as well as freelance reporter. She has been a peace and election integrity activist since 1999. Her undergraduate and graduate educational background are in Spanish, classical philology, and historical and comparative linguistics. Her biography is most recently listed in "Who's Who in America" 2019 and in 2018 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Who's Who.