Thread: Special Advisory: How to report election problems

Friends of ALIPAC,

After receiving numerous complaints on our website about voting irregularities in today's Super Tuesday elections, we are issuing the following tips as an advisory.

The three complaints we have received all involve voters on our team going to vote and being told that they already voted. In most cases they are allowed to fill out a provisional ballot, however these will not be counted in the main vote totals tonight. Provisional ballots are often counted much later.

The following is not intended as legal advice.

If you see or experience suspicious activities while voting, please consider the following steps.

1. Write up a detailed description of the problem and place it on the ALIPAC website at this link, to create an account of the events for us to review.

Comment Link...
http://www.alipac.us/ftopicp-611504.html#611504


2. Proceed to your county board of elections and insist that you be allowed to file a written complaint about the problem. Some board of elections staff may try to disuade you from doing so, but you should insist and make copies of your written complaint. For your complaint to count, it must be submitted in writing.

Insist that a Board of Elections worker issue you copies and a receipt for your complaint. Make sure that an officer of your County Board signs it and is not a temporary employee or volunteer just working during the elections.

3. Once you have filed a complaint with the County Board, proceed to contact your state board of elections and the Federal Elections Commission located at www.FEC.gov and insist that you be allowed to file a written complaint through both agencies.

4. If you see others who witness or experience the same difficulties as you, approach them and politely ask for their phone numbers, in case you need witnesses later on.

It is very common for there to be a host of problems on election day, but you never know when these problems could be part of a broader problem.

If you, or anyone you know, experiences or witnesses significant problems with today's vote, please follow the procedures we have presented here.

Our online activists are at the ready to assist you and answer any questions and provide full support.


The ALIPAC Team
www.alipac.us

If you are told that you have already voted, don't you have the right see the signature and have it compared with yours?

Originally Posted by mkfarnam

If you are told that you have already voted, don't you have the right see the signature and have it compared with yours?

They might have been told they voted in early voting. My concern is if it happened to three of us, how many in total did it happen to? How many races have questionable outcomes because of this?

Hey W, were they all in the same state?

Originally Posted by cayla99

Originally Posted by mkfarnam

If you are told that you have already voted, don't you have the right see the signature and have it compared with yours?

They might have been told they voted in early voting. My concern is if it happened to three of us, how many in total did it happen to? How many races have questionable outcomes because of this?

Hey W, were they all in the same state?

In California: Has anybody experienced their registration being changed? I was told I changed to Non-Afiliated when I have been a registered Republican. I had to vote on a Provisional Ballot and have to call to check and see if my vote was counted.

I hated the polls in Ca. There's no paper trail. When I registered in OK. my voting card was sent to my address but with a different address under my name.

WELCOME TO ALIPAC CALGAL!!!

I am no longer there, but in 2000 I was threatened by an election official who said if I voted for Bush, it would be the end of the US. A vote for anybody but Gore mad me an enemy of the state. She then dogged me while I tried to vote.

(Just because at the end of the day she was correct about Bush, does not make her actions acceptable)


edited to correct another one of those danged typos

By MARCUS BARAM
Feb. 5, 2008
Font Size

E-mail
Print
Share

It wasn't quite a "hanging chad" moment, but Oprah Winfrey stepped in early today to resolve one of the first voting glitches of Super Tuesday.

When Rachel Waymire got to her Chicago precinct this morning to vote, she was told that she wouldn't be able vote because only one of five election judges was present.
Related Stories

*
NY Board Chooses New Voting Machines
*
Ohio County to Switch Voting Machines
*
Colorado Voting Machines Tossed Out
*
Report: Ohio Needs New Voting Machines
*
Study: Fla. Voting Machines Still Flawed
*
Diebold Voting Machines Vulnerable to Virus Attack
*
Audit: Fla. Voting Machines Didn't Err

Top Politics stories

*
Clinton Wins Delegate-Rich States; Obama Wins Most States
*
McCain Wins Big, Huck Gets Boost
*
Clinton Over Obama Among Calif. Latinos

When Winfrey, who happened to be at the next-door precinct, heard about the problem, the talk show queen and Barack Obama supporter told Waymire she would stay with her until she was allowed to cast her ballot.

"She just kind of stood there and then as soon as I got to vote she left and she said, 'I'll call you later to make sure that you voted.' And probably about an hour later I was sitting at my desk and she called my cell phone," Waymire told Chicago's talk station WLS, adding that she voted for Obama.

That was just one of several mishaps and polling flukes on the most busy primary day in history.

One of the more unusual blunders, consistent with Chicago's notorious history of political hijinks, involved 20 voters on the city's North Side who were convinced by a precinct worker that a stylus for marking electronic touch screens was actually a pen with "invisible ink" to be used for marking paper ballots.

The ballots were rejected by the machine and election officials had to scramble to find the voters who cast bad ballots, eventually getting 10 of them to vote with real ink.

A spokesman for the city's Board of Elections said there was no skullduggery involved and confirmed that one of the 20 voters was the wife of an election judge.

Meanwhile, on the city's West Side, police were called to a polling place after a fight broke out between two female election judges, leaving one injured and one in police custody.

The weather played havoc with voting results in Lake County, Ill., on Tuesday afternoon, as a snowstorm may have impacted telephone lines and delaying the transmission of vote totals. As a result, poll workers had to hand-deliver ballots to the county clerk's office.

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton, had to wait for almost an hour to vote this morning because voting machines didn't work at his polling place, the Hoboken Fire Department Engine Company No. 2. About a dozen voters were turned away and it was unclear what caused the problem.

Because another polling site in Jersey City opened almost an hour late this morning, a lawyer for Obama's campaign was in Hudson County Superior Court arguing that the site should be kept open until 8:50 p.m. tonight, the Jersey Journal reported, but was turned down by a judge.

In John McCain's home state of Arizona, there were scattered reports of irregularities that included registered voters' names missing from registration lists, identification problems and changes in polling locations that confused voters who were not provided an opportunity to vote by provisional ballot.

After more than six polling sites in New Mexico ran out of ballots due to heavy voter turnout, new ballots had to be frantically printed and sent via couriers to those locations, according to the state's Democratic Party.

Five precincts in California's Santa Clara County and about a dozen precincts in Alameda County also ran out of ballots, reportedly due to large numbers of independent voters requesting Democratic ballots. The Santa Clara County registrar was urging voters to bring sample ballots or wait in line to use the few electronic voting machines meant to serve the disabled and affected precincts in Alameda County were kept open until 9:00 p.m.

There were problems with voting machines including temporary glitches in St. Louis and Chicago and two-hour waits at some polling stations in Fulton County, Ga. In Los Angeles, voting machines weren't delivered to several polling locations.

Even in Beverly Hills, Calif., there were glitches and a shortage of poll workers forced some voters to cast provisional ballots. "There's so much frustration in this country, so to feel like I'm a disenfranchised voter in Beverly Hills is ridiculous," Kristen Bell, an Obama supporter, told the Los Angeles Times.

And in Wisconsin, Texas and Virginia, some clueless voters showed up at polling locations even though primaries weren't taking place in those states today.

But there weren't any large-scale failures like the "hanging chad" nightmare that resulted in the historic Florida recount of 2000.

Since then, dozens of states have spent millions of dollars to purchase electronic voting machines and to put in places ways to verify votes. But was all that money worth it?

Problems have persisted in almost every federal election since 2000. Just two weeks ago, Republican primary voters in Horry County, S.C., were turned away from some precincts where paperless electronic machines weren't working.

As voters head to the polls today on an election day with the most delegates at stake and a tightening Democratic contest, some are concerned that there could be chaos at the polling booths with malfunctioning machines and disputed results.

Six states, including New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Arkansas, Delaware and Tennessee, are "considered at high risk for having election results affected by machine malfunction or tampering," according to a report by Common Cause and the Verified Voting Foundation, nonprofit groups committed to accountable politics.

Those states made the list because they don't have safeguards in place such as requiring machines to produce paper ballots or records and requiring random postelection audits of the machines, according to the voting foundation's president, Pamela Smith.

"If a situation arises where there is a question about the results, what do you do?" said Smith. "The states that we've listed at high risk — the voting systems may work, it may not work. But there's no way to prove it's accurate. Things can and do go wrong."

Smith says that many states and counties rushed to buy electronic voting machines without regarding the need for a way to verify votes if the machine malfunctioned.

"What happened was people moved too quickly to all electronic and didn't realize that they had to have a way to check for accuracy," she said.

Although most electronic voting machines have worked well, there have been some well-publicized debacles.

Problems at polls make Super Tuesday a little less super
SHERYL KORNMAN and GARRY DUFFY
Tucson Citizen
<a href="http://gcirm.tucson.gcion.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/news.tucsoncitizen.com/stories/local/1356921475/300x250_1/OasDefault/FreedomRV2008/300x250_freedom_html.html/34353831383036363437613938373530?http://www.freedomrvaz.com/"><IMG SRC="http://gcirm.tucson.gcion.com/RealMedia/ads/Creatives/OasDefault/FreedomRV2008/freedomrv_300x250.jpg" WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 BORDER=0></a>
Some Pima County residents ran into problems Tuesday when they tried to vote in the state's presidential preference election.
• Carlos Martinez and his wife, Barbara, showed up at the Pima County Public Library Valencia Branch with their voter registration cards and driver's licenses in hand and were told that Barbara Martinez was not on the official list of registered voters, Carlos Martinez said.
• Francisco Medina, a Tucson Citizen photographer, went to his polling place at River of Life Baptist Church, 6902 E. Golf Links Road, only to find that a man with the same name had voted in his place.
• Some voters reported that their polling places had changed.
• Other voters were told they could only cast a provisional ballot because they had requested and received an early ballot.
• Registered independents seeking to cast ballots were told they legally could not vote.
Brad Nelson, director of elections for Pima County, said the Elections Division staff had seven operators dedicated to taking calls from the public Tuesday.
Most of the voters who call pose questions that have already been answered in mailings to voter households from the Elections Division or Pima County Recorder's Office, Nelson said.
"The majority of questions are 'Where is my polling place?' and "How do I get there?' " Nelson said.
Some voters may have had problems finding their polling places because state statutes require counties to consolidate polling places in presidential preference elections.
That's because the presidential preference election is the only one that the state pays the counties to run, Pima County Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez said. In Pima County's case, with more than 200,000 active registered voters, its 412 precincts have been crunched into half the number of polling places used in other elections, such as the September primaries or November general election.
"That is the statute," Nelson said.
Nelson said the division sent out two mass mailings to each household with at least one registered voter identifying polling place location changes.
Under state statute, a voter could cast a ballot only for presidential candidates representing the party in which the voter is registered.
So registered independents could not cast ballots at all in Tuesday's Arizona presidential preference elections.
The statutes also prohibit registered voters from switching party affiliations on the day of the presidential preference election to cross over to vote for candidates belonging to the other party.
"There seems to be an inordinate number of people who are trying to vote the other party's ballot," Nelson said.
The most common cause of delay for voters Tuesday was meeting voter identification requirements, Nelson said.
One unforeseen problem arose through the Arizona Motor Vehicles Division's online driver's license renewal or address change program.
The computerized service renews licenses and accepts address changes electronically. But drivers making those changes do not receive a new updated license to present as voter identification. Licenses with the new information must be obtained in person at MVD offices.
Supervisor Ray Carroll said he found himself in exactly that spot Tuesday and had to produce another valid form of identification to vote.
At the River of Life Baptist Church, poll workers apparently failed to check the address of the first Francisco Medina who showed up to vote.
He and the Citizen photographer live on the same street, but at different addresses.
The photographer was given a provisional ballot, as was Barbara Martinez and others who wished to vote but who ran into ID, early ballot or registration problems.
Voters who got provisional ballots because of ID or registration problems will have three business days after the election to provide sufficient ID or proof of registration to the Pima County Recorder for their votes to count.
Election officials will be making efforts to verify that provisional ballots are not duplicates of mail-in ballots already received.
Tell us if you had problems voting Tuesday. Send us an e-mail at news@tucsoncitizen.com or call 573-4561. The Associated Press and The Arizona Republic contributed to this article.

Posted By: aprilburge @ 02/06/2008 2:49:44 AM

Comment: My fiancé and I attempted to cast our provision ballots at Precinct 162 at the Community Church of the Foothills in Tucson, AZ today and we were turned away at the polls. We just moved into the precinct and we were told that as long as we presented our voter identification cards, driver???s licenses and any other official identification or correspondence with our current address indicating that we lived in the precinct, we could cast our provision ballots.
The poll worker was so old, confused, disoriented and slow; it was excruciating to watch her try to articulate to voters what they needed to do, or what form they needed to fill out in order to proceed through the provisional process. This extremely feebleminded poll worker fumbled and bumbled her way through the paperwork at a snail???s pace, complaining as she ???helped??? voters.
Finally, when it was our turn, she verbally berated us for not making the necessary changes to our registration that would have preempted the need to cast provisional ballots. I tried to explain that we just moved, even though it was really none of her business or her place to comment. She tried to discourage us by acting confused and disoriented regarding the procedures of provisional ballot casting. She finally told me that I needed to go to back to my old precinct to vote because it was too much trouble to direct me on how to fill out the provisional ballot. At that point in time, I wasn???t able to take the time to fact check or drive across town to the old precinct.
I was incensed. I had taken off time from work, driven 30 miles roundtrip and I wasn???t even allowed to exercise my basic right as a US Citizen ??? as cliché as that sounds. To add insult to injury, I???ve been donating my money, time and energy to volunteering for one of the candidate???s campaigns and I didn???t even get to vote for them today.
My basic concern regarding today???s experience is not so much about getting unfairly turned away from the polls (although I find this disgraceful), but more about the competence and ability of the poll workers, especially the very elderly. While waiting at length, only to be turned away, I saw the familiar sights of retirees working the polling places. Many of them were working efficiently and competently, checking-in voters and directing people to where they needed to go. However, a few older folks like the woman who sent me and my fiancé packing, were not so capable; their lines were longer, their contact with people wasn???t as pleasant, and frankly, these oldsters were clearly inept. This experience confirmed that along with our obviously antiquated and dated electoral system and polling place procedures, many of our poll workers are not qualified, nor are they equipped to properly handle modern-day interaction and socialization. The relics that are plaguing the polls are not so much the voting machines, but the some of the poll workers themselves.

__________________________________________________ ___________

#
Posted By: heathwill2000 @ 02/06/2008 12:04:32 AM

Comment: I was at the Democratic caucus in Kansas....they had it scheduled for a small church. They said they expected 100 people to show up...2,000 came. So, we had to leave the church and stand out in the cold, freezing rain, then icy snow FOR 2 HOURS! Then they tried to count people by a raise of hands...well, they were counting when not everyone was there yet, because some people were still signing in. Some people weren't counted, some were counted twice, anyone off the street could have walked up and been counted, even a registered Republican. Oh, and the checking in part...they asked your name then put an X on your hand with a sharpie....helllooo? I could have saved myself the time in line and marked an X on my own hand. Oh, but wait, what for? No one actually looked for the X. Totally screwed up. Hopefully next time Kansas will cough up the money to hold a primary election.
__________________________________________________ ___________


Posted By: Keith711 @ 02/05/2008 11:53:04 PM

Comment: I am a Georgia voter. And I noticed that when my ID was checked it wasn't checked against a voter list but just taken as is.And I was allowed to fill out my own balloting information. Which was not verified against my ID. I could have put someone else's name after My Id was verified. And I could have gone to another polling place a done the same thing with someone elses's or my own ID.
__________________________________________________ ___________


Posted By: cmamissouri @ 02/05/2008 11:22:45 PM

Comment: KMBC in Kansas City reported, as an aside no less, that so many people turned out that they were told to simply write their name, address, and vote in a list on a tablet of paper. I'm sorry, but is this an approved voting method? I find it really suspicious that Obama has something like 75% of the Kansas Vote while just across the state line in Missouri Clinton is leading by almost 10 points. Is this the next border war?
__________________________________________________ ____________

Hanging chads haven't made an appearance so far, but Florida's next-door neighbor Georgia seemed to encounter a few problems of its own during the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses. In addition to hourlong waits to vote reported early in the day, local radio station WMGT is now reporting that Obama officials have asked Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel to investigate complaints that elderly people in Atlanta received calls offering to allow them to vote by phone—which is not in fact possible. Where do states stand on safeguarding against voting irregularities? NEWSWEEK's Katie Paul spoke with Doug Chapin, director of Pew's Electionline.org, a project developed in response to the 2000 election controversies, which currently has two dozen people stationed in various states to monitor the process.
__________________________________________________ ___________

UPDATE ON JERSEY'S VOTING WOES.

WEST ORANGE, N.J.--In an earlier post, I reported the mayor of Jersey City complaining that he was having trouble "getting our votes counted." Apparently, there were problems statewide with voters gaining access to the polls, according to the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU-NJ), which reported that Hudson County, of which Jersey City is the county seat, was a special case. Even Gov. Jon Corzine was unable to vote at his Hudson County polling place in Hoboken because of problems with the voting machines, according to ACLU-NJ Executive Director Deborah Jacobs, and was not offered a provisional ballot, as required by the state's election law. Instead, Jacobs wrote in a press release, Corzine was sent to another polling place. "When both advocates and members of the press called the Hudson County Superintendent of Elections to ask about Gov. Corzine's experience," according to the press release, "staff members hung up on them."

The ACLU-NJ conducted, in partnership with the League of Women Voters (LWF), a voter hotline that received "numerous complaints," according to the release, which did not quantify the complaints. In addition to situations such as that faced by Corzine, problems alleged by the state ACLU include "difficulty physically accessing voting site" and "numerous people registered as Democrats but listed in the statewide database as Republicans and prohibited from voting as Democrats."

Anticipating problems at polling places, the two organizations had planned a voter protection effort that involved handing out, at polling stations, cards that list a voter's rights. As Super Tuesday polling got under way, ACLU-NJ and the LWV were in court challenging an order by state Attorney General Anne Milgram that the cards not be distributed within 100 feet of a polling station.

There is, at present, no evidence that the irregularities alleged by the ACLU-NJ would have altered the outcome of the state primary -- which Hillary Clinton won with 54 percent of the vote -- or that those allegations bear any relation to the problems that Jersey City Mayor Jeremiah Healy was having getting turnout numbers and results from Hudson County election officials. Before he took the stage, I spoke briefly with Healy, who said the turnout in Jersey City, where most voters are Democrats and 28 percent of the population is black, had been "huge." And a huge turnout certainly could make for a slow count. But he just couldn't get the numbers.

--Adele M. Stan


Posted by Adele M. Stan on February 5, 2008 11:35 PM |