Links on Election Reform

List of Organizations for Honest Elections

www.electiondefensealliance.org/
www.aclu.org
www.blackboxvoting.org
http://www.votefraud.org/
http://www.caef.us/
coalition4visibleballots
http://www.nvri.org/
www.protectcaliforniaballots.org/
http://electionarchive.org/
www.velvetrevolution.us/
www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/
VerifytheVote.org

Court Case

Lawsuit against Iowa GOP: http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/UPDATE/Update2007-08-15.htm

A note about the election process in Iowa... After your DL is scanned, and your thumb is inked, all you do is fill in a bubble and let the machine swallow your ballot. The number of voters strictly comes from the machines' tallies, so it would be easy to stuff or remove ballots. Anyone with common sense knows there are better procedures than this.

Makes me wonder why anyone would donate money to a party that is scamming people...

Who is Ron Paul? What is voter fraud? What is election fraud?

Organizers and supporters always ask me how I found out about Ron Paul. Like most people, I stay away from politics. I do not claim allegiance to a political party, but rather I'm partial to vote on the issues and the character of the candidates instead. My entire childhood I have despised the news on television and continue to distrust it. I haven't watched TV in years, but one Friday night my parents and I gathered to watch our favorite show, "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO. Bill Maher is very anti-partisan who thinks Republicans are assholes, and Democrats are pussies. However, on that one night, Bill Maher announced he had a new hero--Dr. Ron Paul. I listened to the brief interview and the raging crowd, and that's when I started doing the research. I added Ron Paul's profile to my Myspace account, subscribed to his blogs, googled news articles, and watched interviews on YouTube.com. Soon I looked up the other candidate's issues and watched the debates so I wouldn't be one-sided (Bless the internet!). During this short period, I was always trading information with other Ron Paul supporters through e-mail lists and Myspace bulletins. For $5, I bought a Choose Liberty wristband and I was sent a shiny new Ron Paul bumper sticker as a bonus! (I already asked, and that site is run by one of Ron Paul's sons who may donate the profits to the campaign if enough people order.)

So I was making my first steps into the deep end of information and networking. This is where I started to get angry. Major networks like CNN and MSNBC began offering online polls. I voted for one such poll, and Ron Paul was winning! The next day the poll was missing lots of votes! Other people noticed this, and a few minor news websites wrote articles about it. I was witnessing media error rather than just hearing about it. My burning hatred for the news conglomerates was just given some more kindling. I decided to get hooked up with as many Ron Paul supporters as I could. I found RonPaulAustin.com. After receiving e-mails for nearly 3 days, a group was planning to caravan to Iowa for the Straw Poll. I packed some clothes and my voice recorder and Thursday morning at 5AM, we left.

During the 16-hour drive, I had the chance to read Hacked!, which is a compilation of publications discussing all the problems and vulnerabilities with electronic voting machines. Our votes have been stolen since the late 1970s. I highly recommend reading this book. It's short, to the point, and nothing but cited facts. Did you know that real felons have been selling election machines to us? The truth is out there if you just look for it. I know there are tons of books on voter fraud that I have not seen yet. This all happened so fast.

I get to Ames, Iowa thinking I'm going to support Ron Paul, but now I'm far too excited about getting film footage of the Diebold optical scanning machines that will be used in the Straw Poll election. I couldn't sleep.

Friday morning, August 10th, we arrived at the Iowa State University to walk around, meet the Ron Paul campaign, and see if we can interview news reporters. After talking with the Ron Paul campaign manager, he disliked the idea that we would be trying to film inside the building where the machines were set up because he didn't want any blowback on the campaign. He appreciated our spirit, but thought the effort was perhaps too instigating. I took my Ron Paul wristband off and went to the demonstration anyway, video camera in hand. We got about 6 minutes of footage, but as soon as we asked who was testing the machines and where the paper ballots would be secured, we were asked to leave. Apparently only campaign managers may get in the ballot rooms to oversee the election.

Now I was taken to a meeting for the Americans for Verifiable Elections. Everyone was from out of state, gathered to seek the truth and fight for freedom. Ideas were exchanged, and teams were split up. I immediately offered my service to be the Click-Coordinator in charge of tallying the total number of voters on the day of the election. There was barely 25 of us, and we found it nearly impossible to recruit supporters that night downtown at the pubs where Ron Paul was giving a speech. That night I was too excited to sleep more than 2 hours. I was tired the next morning, but thoroughly determined.

Ron Paul signs lined every road and supporters stood at every corner. "Today is the day," I chanted. "Make sure your vote counts today!" we all said. Our organization wore yellow shirts with "Voteinsunshine.com" on the front, and we began passing out pamphlets and literature. We ran into trouble almost immediately when security said we couldn't hand out papers, even though we had prior permission from the police. (Hey, cops aren't all that bad; they believe in the First Amendment like all Americans should.)

I was stationed on the West side of the Scheman building and communicating with the other 3 exits as I watched hundreds of "Mitt Wits" flood out of buses and scramble to get out of the sun and into the air conditioning. They were whining families or snobby women wearing horribly applied makeup that was melting in the heat (OK, ok, there were lots of normal people too, but the majority of them were senior citizens). I saw, first hand, the trends of voters, the group dynamics, and I knew who was winning and why. Huckabee supporters were mostly young families. Ron Paul supporters were single couples, minority groups, intellectuals, or young students. Tancredo and Brownback attracted a lot of diversity. The Ron Paul supporters had the most enthusiasm though, and they understood the concept of hackable machines. They were the first to sign affidavits and petitions.

As the heat beat down, I ran between stations to check on everyone's food/water supplies and gave them breaks. At 4 o'clock, however, we all took a break to see Ron Paul's speech. I was standing directly in the back, so I felt like he was talking directly to me.





Now I wish I had made it to his speech in the coliseum because it was great. Go to VoteinSunshine.com to see day-to-day updates of our groups' findings.

A buddy and I commented on the Fair Tax Ferris Wheel and how a fair tax is hardly fair at all. It's manipulative and the free market's worst enemy. Killing unconstitutional taxes is the only way out that we can see. The US borrows 2 billion dollars a day from China... what's going to happen to the value of our dollar? What's going to happen if we don't get troops out of the Middle East and bring them back home where we need the most protection? On the news I saw lots of warfare brewing in Iran and I wanted to cry because I have a good friend from Iran. We all know good people from distant countries, so why fight with them? Something is going terribly wrong. I mean, this isn't just about peace, this is about cleaning our own porch before sweeping the porches of others. Bush has destroyed our country and our constitution. It's time for a revolution.

The security staff put a lot of pressure on us, but we also put a lot of pressure on them. I guessed that Team Mitt-Wit had won, Brownback was second, Paul third, and then a close run with Huckabee, Tommy Thompson, and Tancredo. All the VoteinSunshine people were relaxing in the shaded park across ISU while I added up all the clickers. My total was 12,950 but I had to estimate that about 1500 votes were missed when cops stopped some clickers. My final estimate was 14,500, and anything over 15,000 would be absolutely ridiculous and should elicit immediate shock and outrage.

The results were supposed to be ready at 7pm, but low and behold the machines malfunctioned. Everyone in the coliseum was waiting and asking what was wrong with Diebold. The first excuse was that it was humidity that caused the delay... but we all knew the machines were kept inside an air-conditioned building. Then word spread that one of Romney's direct relatives was on the auditing team. It ended up that 2 machines had to be hand-counted. Everyone has an opinion on this.

Then finally when the Iowan congressman got on stage to give the results, the only people in the crowd were either Huckabee or Ron Paul supporters. I was holding up a bouquet of sunflowers. When the total of 14,302 votes was stated, I felt really good about it. To know with your own sound mind and judgment that you personally verified an election is a feeling like no other.

However, a volunteer from the credentials process came up to us and told us that near the end of the day, one man was allowed to vote twice. This Mitt-Wit had his driver's license scanned twice and both times it showed that he had already voted, but they looked at his thumbs and didn't see any ink, so they let him in quietly. This volunteer said the man looked very nervous. If one man was let through, how many others? How can we trust the election process if no citizens are helping to govern it?

Votes are frauded, television news is frauded, hell even internet is frauded sometimes. You can't trust what others tell you, and so I urge you to think about my story and go find out for yourself what is really happening in the world.

Here's someone else's account of the Iowa Straw Poll:


The problem still remains to be solved... What's the best way to verify elections? Should the machines be in a glass room so people can watch from the outside? How about having everyone vote outside in the sunshine? Should certain volunteers be selected to sit down and hand-count ballots from different machines and then have the machines verify the vote? It shouldn't be the other way around.

What are your ideas?

Let local high school students from surrounding communities volunteer to tally all the ballots? I would have loved to have had the privilege to verify a presidential election when I was in high school... heck, even in middle school!

Some have said elections should be made available online for several days. I think that's really absurd. But we still need to address the issue of how to make it possible for the visually impaired to vote anonymously.













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