On Tuesday, January 30th, VoteRescue, an Austin ,Texas based election reform group, helped monitor an election held with paper ballots, hand-counted, at the Public Access Community Television Station in Austin.
The election for their Producers' Council was run by Producer Sue Cole, who called VoteRescue to consult and ultimately monitor the election with safe hand-counted paper ballot election procedures. VoteRescue plans to continue developing protocols for HCPB elections and to be available for private organizations or non-profits to help execute elections for results that are above reproach. The writeup on the event follows below:
A Brief Report about Today's Election
Today's election of the 2007 Producers' Council members held at the Public Access Community Television station here in Austin ran very smoothly and "professionally" due to the incredible VoteRescue volunteers who helped throughout the 12-hour voting day. When the polls closed at 8 pm, the "antique" metal ballot box was immediately sealed and carried in full public view to the main TV studio at the facility for a live broadcast of the counting and tallying.
Our one big live drama took place when the hand count of the total number of unused paper ballots came up two ballots short. Did we panic? No sirree because we had the actual ballots to recount which we did on live TV. And, lo and behold, we found the two missing ballots that had been in the stack all along, but just not counted. Hand-counted paper ballots RULE!! It was a wonderful learning moment for all of us and hopefully for those watching on TV, too.
Listed below are the VoteRescuers who helped make today such a positive and successful experience for everyone involved. All of them worked more than one 2-hour shift so that we would always have atleast two VoteRescue poll workers present for the entire day.
Vickie Karp
Laura Killins
Linda Greene
Joe Stewart
Dan Maldonado
Babs Warren
Due to the enthusiastic and dedicated attitude of everyone from VoteRescue at the PACT today, we received invitations from several producers to be on their weekly program in the very near future to talk about hand-counted paper ballot elections. Obviously, these public access shows are a terrific venue for getting the shocking truth about electronic voting out to more and more Texans.
The ideal situation for VoteRescue would be to appear on a weekly community television broadcast to report the steady flow of alarming electronic voting discoveries. If there is anyone who is currently a TV producer at PACT and can help facilitate our reaching this goal, please contact me (Karen Renick) at 496-7408.
Thank you, once again, to those who came out today to demonstrate how important hand-counted ballots are to having fair and 100% transparent elections!
Do continue your effort to educate your friends and family members about the use of hcpbs - instead of electronic voting machines - to count the votes. And don't forget to look through the Citizen's Tool Kit found on www.blackboxvoting.org and pick just one of the many well-thought-out modules in the Tool Kit to get you started.
We'll be contacting you soon about supporting VotteRescue's legislative efforts in the Texas Legislature this session. So, stay tuned...
Good Luck!
Karen
Karen Renick
Director, VoteRescue
"Let the ballot boxes speak, so that the souls can be quiet."
~sign on a fence near the Federal Electoral Tribunal in Mexico City
