Help America Recount:
Citizens to buy recounts in Ohio, Florida; Nader to recount New Hampshire Diebold machines
Press conference: Wed. Nov. 10 - 1616 P St. NW 7th Floor 1 p.m., Washington D.C.
WEDNESDAY NOV 10, Washington D.C. -- Consumer group rallying citizens for recounts in Ohio, Florida; voters can fund audits of Ohio and court challenges in Florida by donating to HelpAmericaRecount.org, a 527 tax exempt organization set up exclusively for recount funding.
Getting out the vote is good, but getting a 123 percent turnout is too good to be true. This happened in Fairview Park, Ohio. In Broward County, Florida, voting machines can do the moon walk: They count backwards, but only on certain ballot measures.
In New Hampshire, voting trends seemed to depend more on which voting machine was used than on what party voters were affiliated with. When asked to produce "zero reports" at poll opening, some Florida touch-screen machines reported votes were already in the system, apparent stuffing of the electronic ballot box. Gahanna, Ohio had thousands more votes show up than voters.
Accounting for provisional ballots has been murky, and anomalies have now surfaced in Cuyahoga County, Perry County, and Youngstown Ohio. Florida optical scan machines in 40 counties had statistically improbable results, which did not exist in Florida touch-screens. Technicians got inside access to a central tabulator in Collier County during the middle of the election, and modem security settings may have been disabled for Diebold machines.
As hundreds of anomalies pop up, citizens are thinking:
Who really won? Don't know. Gotta audit!
Black Box Voting, a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer protection group for elections, has been investigating election irregularities for two years. The group has honed in on voting machines, citing problems with internal audit logs, tamperability, improper testing and certification, and bogus results.
The group is now calling for citizen-initiated recounts.
The National Ballot Integrity Project is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that has approached voting machines from another angle: Don't want 'em , don't need 'em. The organization lobbies for transparency and public accountability in election systems.
Ralph Nader, who earned notoriety for decades as a consumer protection advocate, just wants to know the truth. How accurate are the Diebold voting machines in New Hampshire?
Using a little-known provision in Ohio law, any five Ohioans who did not vote for the winning candidate can file for recounts. In Florida, citizens can file to contest the election, county by county.
Black Box Voting researchers are helping to identify key counties with the worst anomalies, for hand counts and other audits, to detect computer intrusions and vote count discrepancies.
Nader has set the pace for proper auditing, insisting on a hand count of New Hampshire's Diebold optical scan machines. According to Black Box Voting Executive Director Bev Harris, this method, along with other auditing, is essential to verify machine results, because running ballots through the machines a second time is not a meaningful audit.
