29 May 2008: “Harris’ing Them into Quality Control

Short of Olympic figure skating or a clown act in the circus, there’s really no excuse for all the times an “oops” occurs in the electoral cosmos in this country. Oops, an election official didn’t boot up the machine in time; oops, the machine crashed again; oops, the light keeps going back to the wrong candidate on the screen.

     Citizens must invoke quality control where their votes are concerned. Think of the analogies again, if other vital industries in this country had occasion to say “oops” one thousandth, one hundred thousandth of the times oops events occur in realms concerning the vote, our constitutional right.

     No greater gesture of contempt for the people is there than the sad state of the voting process in its every aspect.

     The godmother of voting integrity, Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org, was the featured guest on Voice of the Voters Wednesday evening.

     She had some surprising analyses to offer this evening, inventive and stimulating insights on what is happening and what we can still do about it.

     There are three areas where elections go bad, she said: One is the simplicity of those in charge of the ballot, who are frequently untrained—which works well in New Hampshire, where vote counting is done in public, but few other places.

     Two is the mind control achieved by bad talking points, suppression, misdirection, miscounting; we must see through these devices to what they are accomplishing and wage a better battle against them.

     Three is the projections based on exit polls when those who provide the figures are hidden from us, nor do we know how they arrive at their totals. In this grey area, there was no ooops on CNN during the primaries. It is either foolproof or manufactured. The projections were always on the mark.

     One of the reasons Bev is a pillar of IE is her ability to twist around truisms to show us how much we accept unthinkingly. I always esteemed exit polls, as do many others, for achieving a validity evasive within the buildings. But now I wonder.

     Another reason Bev is such a hero is the blackbox toolkit she offers at her Web site: myriad ways to combat those oopses that so overturn our democracy and constitutional rights.

     The tool kit is “focused on making 2008 as fair as possible.” She categorized activists into five groups: 1) Those who work behind the scene; 2) The hunter-gatherers; 3) The organizers; 4) The funders; and  5) The communicators. The latter group comprises those who are verbally articulate, as speakers or writers—of course the group she identifies with best.

     The point is simple: bring in whatever you can. If you have no talents, then give money. We couldn’t have gotten Harri Hursti here from Finland to achieve what he did without funding.

     Everyone has something to give. Bev’s toolbox encompasses all skill sets. Those who say they are too busy should think again, because the stakes are too high. They should rethink their priorities, she said.

     The top three issues this fall, she continued, are the five to ten million voters who will be kept from voting or stuck with provisional ballots (“second-class votes”) that are often not counted. Then there are the miscounts: the ES&S contraption that kept hopping around among the candidates—these Bev called the number crunchers.

     She spoke of some free software on the Web that harvests the vote counting process as it occurs; one of them can gather up results from all the states at once and follow them minute by minute.

     But finally, there are the robocalls used by the spoilers, as in Oregon, where people were called and told that instead of mailing their ballots they could bring them to “ballot collecting centers.” So much for vote-by-mail.

     In line with Mary Ann’s idea of the two weeks in September devoted to “Ready, Set, Vote and Check,” Bev suggested a further step: see if your i.d. matches their lists. If you say Bev and Beverly is on their list, you might not be able to vote. You can’t be too careful these days. Check and recheck where you are assigned to vote.

     If something goes wrong at the polls, be sure that a poll worker documents it in writing. In one instance, after summoned to witness a “hopping” machine screen, a poll worker reported the incident and the entire surrounding area received new machines.

     Lori asked Bev if she thought that protesting was effective or useful. The answer was, it depends on how you protest. She spoke of the effectiveness of the number twenty—how twenty protesters dressed in orange made quite a dramatic statement without uttering a word. Their presence alone was provocative.

     “After the written report, what happens next?” asked Mary Ann, who credited Bev with drawing her into IE.

     Propagate the report, answered Bev. Send notices to elected officials, the media, blogs, and networks.

     Mary Ann spoke of change occurring at the periphery and then of climbing up in the hierarchy, from “what” to “why.” As an illustration she referred to the Six-Day War and Israel’s battle with Egypt over Sinai. That was what they both wanted, but once it occurred to someone to ask why. Sinai was demilitarized, so that Israel could breathe easier and Egypt could have a territory dear to its cultural and historical tradition.

     In voting also, we must move up to the “why”s.

     We’re coming together more than we have before, said Bev. It’s about being sure that our country keeps its promises to the people—sovereignty. Blackboxvoting draws in people of all political persuasions, all who believe in EI.

     To assemble her toolkit, said Bev, she traveled the country finding out from grassroots activists what actions had been most effective for them, in terms of combining common sense, ingenuity, and creativity.

     Keep it simple, she said, something you do well; stay in your comfort zone.

     We need to get everyone involved, said Mary Ann—from youth to senior citizens, combining energy and wisdom.

     Mary Ann asked further what Bev had witnessed during the New Hampshire primary. “Beauty and the Beast,” was the answer. The public was welcome, but at the top level the under secretary of state was obstructing the counting, which of course led to problems.

     Go after the bad, but don’t forget the good, said Bev.

     She called Maine the actual “role model” state. When someone was caught tampering with the ballot boxes, stronger ones were purchased.

     In New Hampshire the polls are located in 239 different towns. The ballots have to be brought to one central location. This year the primary ballots arrived “in a mess.” Boxes had been opened and those in charge refused to lock them into a vault overnight, so the ballots were left out—what Bev called a “breakdown in the chain of custody.” Tracking the votes from the polls to the central tabulation point is also crucial.

     We can never do enough—to pay for years of lethargy or to rescue our democracy from those who took over while we slept.