http://tinyurl.com/TX-Hotsheet

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

reports of problems observed firsthand
Election systems aren't perfect. They need to be monitored. Problems need to be reported, corrected.

But like many tasks today, there are too few hands for the job. And the job is getting more and more complex.

You can help.

First, report any problem you encounter—during campaigning, voter registration, balloting, or any other time.

Second, publish your report widely. This not only alerts fellow voters to immediate pitfalls, it helps build a database for revamping the system.

Our Hotsheet lets you publish your report instantly—complete, intact, unfiltered—directly to fellow voters, troubleshooters, journalists, researchers, and other interested observers.

Our site makes it easy to—

Call a hotline for immediate help.
Post a report—and see it published here instantly.
Upload audio or video files.
Read Latest up-to-the-minute reports.
Read All reports, starting with the oldest.

Questions, comments? Post a note here! Or email us at the address below.

Thanks for visiting. And please check back soon for updates!

Karen Renick
Hotsheet Moderator,
karen@voterescue.org


P. S. Please don't vote before election day! To find out why, click here.
Low Tech Voting Gets "Thumbs Up"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Low-Tech Voting Gets "Thumbs Up"

Chicago--With elections approaching, the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project (IBIP) has this advice for voters:

1) Vote in person, not by mail.

2) Vote on election day, not earlier.

3) Vote on a paper ballot, not on a touch-screen voting machine.

"These three steps will help protect your ballot from loss, damage, and alteration," says IBIP Director of Technology, Roy Lipscomb. "The longer the delay between the casting of a ballot and the counting of a ballot, the greater the chance of mishaps."

This risk is not abated by election-day voting on touch-screen voting machines. The tenuous reliability of such machines has led to their being banned by Florida, California, and other states--plus countries like Ireland, the Netherlands, and Germany.

To compensate, such machines are now commonly required to back up their digitized votes by printing a paper copy. But this remedy falls short.

* Only a small percentage of votes ever get audited (usually 5% or less),   so it's rare that paper copies ever get consulted.

* Most voters do not verify the paper copy of their votes.
   http://ballot-integrity.org/nvvotersurvey.pdf

* Many paper copies turn out to be defective.
  http://tinyurl.com/26r7kd3

* Even if the paper copy exactly matches the digital copy,
  both may be spurious.
  http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~seclab/projects/voting/

"Protect your votes from going AWOL," says Lipscomb. "Vote in person, on election day--and with a paper ballot."

The Illinois Ballot Integrity Project is a non-partisan grassroots organization pushing for election systems that are fully transparent, accurate, and verified. Their homepage is http://ballot-integrity.org

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Telephone Hotlines


Government

HOTLINE: NUMBERS TO CALL FOR URGENT PROPLEMS

Texas Secretary of State: 800-252-8683

Election Division: 800-252-VOTE

Your County Election Division

U. S. Attorney's Office in Texas: 210-384-7400
for complaints about election fraud

Federal Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division
Voting Section:
800-253-3931 or 202-307-2767
for complaints about ballot access problems or discrimination


Non-Governmental

866-OUR-VOTE
 (866-687-8683)
888-VE-Y-VOTA
 (888-839-8682)
Election Protection Coalition
Year-round voting info and help.
On Nov 2, attorneys will be on call
to address problems at the polls.



Cook County

(312) 603-7960 Cook County State's Attorney
(Chicago and Suburban)

(312) 269-7870 Chicago Elections Office
(312) 603-0906 Cook County Suburban Elections Office

   For English-speaking operator, press 1 then 8.

   For Spanish-speaking operator, press 2 then 8.





DuPage County

(630) 407-8000 DuPage County State's Attorney
(630) 407-5600 DuPage County Elections Office



Lake County

(847) 377-3000 Lake County State's Attorney
(847) 377-2410 Lake County Elections Hotline


Where to Upload Video/Audio Reports

* After uploading a file, be sure to post its link in your report. *

Video: VideoTheVote.org
Each VideoTheVote video should be between 30 seconds long and 3 minutes long.

YouTube (If you have a YouTube account.)
Each YouTube video can be up to 2 gigabytes in size and 15 minutes in length.

senduit.com (Alternative to the above two.)
Each file can be up to 100 megabytes in size.

Audio:

senduit.com
Each file can be up to 100 megabytes in size.

Reports and Comments

6 comments:

Texas Elections Incidents Hotsheet said...

Grant Rostig for County Commissioner #4 said...

URGENT!

I won my primary by two votes. My opponent has filed for a recount. I need volunteers to help assure a fair recount in the next few days. The recount will be in Lockhart TX just south of Austin. Please call me at 512 394 3521 or email grant AAATTT grantrostig.com

http://GrantRostig.com
March 16, 2010 8:32 AM

Texas Elections Incidents Hotsheet said...

Anonymous said...

our city elections had a councilman run with sole intention of rsigning after election so mayor could then appoint who HE wanted on the council not the two people that ran for the seat that wanted to serve.

He won closely and did resign while the Mayor kept it a secret until last week when the council voted to appoint a gentleman that has yet to show up to be sworn in - nor did he run in May's election.

this has to be illegal
August 23, 2010 8:26 PM

Texas Elections Incidents Hotsheet said...

T said...

I recently purchased a CD of voter data--the complete voter list for the May 10, 2008 Election. If you can give me any suggestions on how to proceed analyzing this data, I would sure appreciate it. Thanks for your important work.

Turley Thornton
35 Kit Carson Ln
Lubbock, TX 79404
September 12, 2010 8:49 PM

Texas Elections Incidents Hotsheet said...

T said...

I see some guidelines, My county is Lubbock, My town is Lubbock, My precinct is #2

Turley Thornton
35 Kit Carson Ln
Lubbock, TX 79404
September 12, 2010 8:51 PM

Unknown said...

Precinct 4401 in Dallas, Texas had no Texas Propositions (11) on the ballot.

Terry Rengers

Anonymous said...

I was a poll watcher of the provisional vote count in Nov. 2nd 2011 General election in my county. The early vote ballot board judge accepted ballots for count that were not eligible to count. I objected several times and request that she call the SOS to verify the eligibility of the ballots. She refused my request and quickly opened and separated the ballots from the envelopes. I did not leave the room, to make the call myself, for fear she would not allow me back in (judges have the right to do that if a worker leaves the room).
I did not know that the ballots and the envelope do not have a relationship once they are separated. So, once they were all open and we moved to the machine for counting, I had the Election Office Administrator call the SOS. I was correct in that the ballots were not eligible to count, but it was to late to do anything about it because the envelopes had been opened and the ballots seperated from them.
The only remedy at that point would be for the candidate to file suit to overturn all the provissional ballots.
This is ludicrise that a Judge can ignore a poll watchers objection. It was clearly verified on the envelopes that these votes were not valid to count, the voters had cast the ballots in the wrong precint.

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