[VoteRescue] Update: Hand-counting paper ballots on Election Day?

[Vickie Karp]

Hi, VoteRescuers, AND THANK YOU SO MUCH for volunteering to hand-count on
Election Day!

We were hopeful we would have a chance to hand-count November 4th because
one of the County Commissioners had told us that it might be possible for
Travis County voters to have a choice on Election Day as to how they
could vote:  "Paper - or Machine".  And the paper ballots would be
hand-counted, as we at VoteRescue have been pushing for for years,
because we know that computerized voting OR computerized vote-counting
are subject to undetectable manipulation of election results.

We learned last Friday that this is not going to happen.  The
Commissioners have declined to make this request of our County Clerk,
Dana DeBeauvoir, to whom they defer election decisions.  We will once
again be stuck with the paperless Hart e-Slate machines which are
susceptible to undetectable hacking.

BUT: We have devised a new way to monitor our election in Travis County
and we are asking if you might be willing to volunteer a few hours that
day to execute this with us instead:

We will be setting up "Trouble-reporting Centers" far & wide across
Travis County!  We will be-sending our volunteers, just one or two per
precinct, with a sign that says, ""Did you Have Trouble Voting?  Come See
Me!"  - and you will be there with a clipboard with a form that allows a
disgruntled voter to "tell the story" of whatever problem they had
inside.  We are hoping, of course, to collect multiple stories of machine
problems.  If we are successful in getting even a few good stories, we'll
be able to feed those to the press both directly and through a press
release if warranted, to help publicize the problems these machines
really do present to Travis County voters.  If we are "lucky", we may get
a problem that could make national news, as many machine problems do.
When I had the chance to share this idea with Bev Harris of Black Box
Voting, she thought it was fantastic.  

By sending just one or two people to each precinct, we will be able to
massively cover a huge section of the County; several dozen precincts
could be covered, even if only for a few hours each.  Contrast this to
our past monitoring efforts of Exit Polling, when we could only cover 5
or 6 precincts out of several hundred.

We will be splitting the day into shifts of about 3 hours each, and
giving exact instructions at two duplicate VoteRescue meetings; one will
occur the week of October 20th; the other will occur  on Tuesday, October
28th at Brave New Books.  We're still confirming dates/venues for the
first meeting.  

Please let us know if you can give us 3 hours on Election Day, and if
it's okay to put you on our VoteRescue e-mail list, if you're not
already, so that all notices about the upcoming meetings will
automatically go to you.  Shifts will likely be:  7 til 10 am; 10 til 1
pm; 1 to 4 pm; and 4 to 7:30 pm.  Then, WE PARTY!!!!!

(I will be sending this notice out to each person who was kind enough to
respond to our original request for hand-count volunteers who is not
currently on our mailing list, most of whom had the message forwarded by
YOU wonderful people!)

Thanks so much, and we hope you'll still join us for this important
action on Election Day!

Vickie Karp, PR Director
VoteRescue (.org)
512/775-3737 (cell)
vickievoter at gmail.com
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