[Voterescue] Report from New Hampshire: Following the Van

[Vickie Karp]

48 Hours in New Hampshireby Vickie Karp I've just completed my second day
in Concord and other parts of New Hampshire with Bev Harris, Kathy
Greenwell of Bullett County, Kentucky, and Jeannie Dean of Sarasota,
Florida.  We have been monitoring the chain of custody of the ballots
being transported by a van which is sent out each morning from the State
Archive Building in Concord and is driving a route to little towns around
(so far) south New Hampshire, stopping at Town Hall buildings in each
town to pick up that town's ballots for the recount.  While the
Democratic recount has been taking place inside the Archive Building in
Concord, with lots of transparency and observors sitting across from each
table, we've been chasing a van and a police car through the New
Hampshire countryside, sometimes at 80 to 90 mph in 55 mph zones, to
track ballot chain of custody custody for the interested voters of
America. "Bring peanut butter and Depends!" Our advice for those who will
take our place once we leave. There are no lunch breaks on this gig, and
no bathroom breaks either! "Butch" and "Hoppy", the van driver and his
assistant, have certainly done their best to "shake" us, and they
succeeded yesterday with a shrewd escape from a back exit of a town hall
parking lot which was not visible from where our car was parked in
front.  "I thought they were turning around to go out the front
driveway!" I moaned to Bev, when we realized they had split out the back
way.  We never did find them again, but saw several hours later when the
van arrived back at the Archive building to deliver the boxed ballots. 
No citizens were present when those boxes arrived.  And we just don't
know exactly where the van was during those 2-3 hours prior to delivery.
Yes, this is what "eternal vigilance"  looks like this week in New
Hampshire!   My experience as a Realtor has come in handy as I've been on
many a Realtor tour where we "caravan" from one new listing to another,
speeding every inch of the way.  I had to run a yellow light yesterday to
keep up with the targets, and at the next town hall where we followed the
van and the state police car, the patrolman came over to my little rent
car and gave me a stern warning that I might receive a citation if I
broke the law.  ("What about YOU?" I said to him, under my breath of
course.) But today it was the patrolman who got a lecture, this time from
Bev.  Kathy, whose husband is a policeman in Kentucky, noted that their
speeding through a school zone with yellow lights flashing, and going 50
in small towns with speed limits of 25 and 30, was endangering children,
citizens, and of course, US, as we fly along behind them trying to keep
up.  Bev decided to mention this to the NH patrolman today when the race
was on again, while we were parked in one of the town hall building
parking lots waiting for Butch and Hoppy to bring out the boxes of
ballots (we had done a lot of videotaping of ballot boxes coming out of
the offices & going in to the van yesterday). After the lecture, the van
and police car were easier to track because they really did stay more in
line with the speed limit.  We had a little more time to enjoy the
snow-laden fields and yards of the beautiful New Hampshire countryside
while we followed the two vehicles from towns such as Rye, Portsmouth,
New Castle, Auburn, and Greenland. Still, they managed to give us the
slip again this afternoon by doing a clever elusive maneuver:  They
pulled into a convenience store/gas station and made a U-turn, then
turned into a busy lane of traffic which was too congested for us to
follow right behind them.  We madly passed all the cars we thought were
between us, then realized they were nowhere in sight.  We parked our two
cars in front of a furniture store while we called Walter Reddy, who was
back at the Archive building, and asked him to write a Freedom of
Information Act request for Secretary of State Bill Gardner to request
the schedule of towns where the van was headed.  With that information,
we could probably catch up with it.  Just as Bev was giving Walter the
wording for the FOIA over the phone, in a scene reminiscent of a Laurel &
Hardy movie, the van and police car suddenly drove right by
us, apparently having double-backe d from a wrong turn, and now putting
us right back on their tails! It's the chain of custody, STUPID! When
this is what citizens have to do to ascertain that ballots have not been
tampered with, and this is the resistence we face, how can we have
confidence in the results of this recount?  When we returned to the
Archive Building late yesterday afternoon I finally got to watch some of
the Democratic recount.  The procedure is open, transparent, and citizen
videographers are welcome; they just can't touch the ballots or the
ballot boxes.  Fair enough. Four long tables are set up in a large room. 
Counters sit on one side, observors on the other side.  They sort, count,
and stack the ballots, with pink strips across the top of the Republican
ballots and blue strips across the top of the Democrats'.  The actions of
everyone in the room are highly visible.  I took lots of video tape and
no one complained.  The procedure reminded me of the way VoteRescue
volunteers count paper ballots after a Parallel Election, or Exit Poll
results at the Texas Straw Poll and the November 6th election. Problem is
this chain of custody thing. Bev and Sally Castleman found ballot boxes
last Thursday with slits in the sides.  The van picking up the ballots
has hours of time unaccounted for by any citizens and regular monitoring
of the van may or may not be able to occur.  The ballots are delivered
outside the observation of citizen monitors.  Boxes of ballots were left
on the floor of the counting room overnight last week and not locked up
in a vault in the building, counter to prior procedure just days before. 
The security of these boxes is supposedly a long adhesive seal afixed
across the box tops and sides.  Today we found a box of these lying
around in the counting room after the events of the day were over.  Kathy
peeled off the paper backing and stuck the seal on top of one of the
empty ballot boxes sitting next to it.  She peeled it right back up.  No
muss, no fuss, no cardboard fragments from the box top adhered to it.  In
other words:  Completely reusable, and security value:  ZERO!  What all
of this does, of course, is put a dark cloud of suspicion on the results
of this recount.  Today Kucinich's team threw in the towel and ended
their part of the recount.  By 3 pm the counting room was vacant and all
ballots stored away. What I'm hearing is that the money for continuing
the recount simply isn't there. I do not yet have the results of this
effort.  I have heard that weird anomalies have shown up in the machine
counted towns' ballots in particular.  I'll be doing another writeup on
those findings as soon as I can.   Tomorrow the Republican recount
begins.  I met Albert Howard on Tuesday, the Republican presidential
candidate who filed for the recount and paid for it in full, something
along the lines of $55,000 (with the help of the Granny Warriors and a
lot of campaign contributions, many, I hear, from Ron Paul supporters.) 
I admire his courage and tenacity.  When he filed for the recount, the
filing fee of $2000 was a challenge to produce.  Now the money to recount
the entire state has been paid to the Secretary of State and the process
begins anew tomorrow. The most amazing thing about all this is being here
with Bev, Kathy, Jeannie, Sally, Walter, and other election reform
activists who share a burning passion to make this recount a clean
event.  They come here from all across the country to observe, videotape,
monitor, question election officials, and yes, chase down vans and police
cars.  Bob Schulz of We the People Foundation is here doing webcasts for
the duration of the recount, I hear, and I hope to meet him tomorrow. If
you have some spare time over the next few weeks to give to election
reform, come to New Hampshire!  Your country needs you here!
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