A Zogby Poll from August of 2006 indicates that 92% of Americans are worried about our votes being counted in secret. After all of the problems with the 2006 elections, I would say that even more people are concerned today. The New York Times recently published an article “Can You Count on Voting Machines?”  A growing number of people are beginning to rightly distrust electronic voting machines and ask themselves “Does my vote really get counted?”

Topics on this page:

1. How the votes are counted in secret
2. Why absentee and early voting should be avoided
3. About affidavits other efforts to make sure that the votes are counted accurately
4. Will voters be scared away if you talk about the problem?
5. How to change government from within

If you think that we can trust having our votes counted in secret, then you’ll be happy to know that your view is shared my many powerful and influential people.  For example, Joseph Stalin said, “Those who cast the votes decide nothing.  Those who count the votes decide everything.”  If you want to role back the evolution of civilization from citizen influence over government to a form of feudalism, then you might as well quit reading now.

If you don’t understand that computers count in secret and you’re thinking that these fears are unfounded, take a minute and think about three things:

1. How does a computer count votes?
2. Do computers sometimes malfunction?
3. Do you have any security measures on your computer to protect against hackers? 

The last two questions are really easy, but just in case you haven’t yet thought of how computers count, it’s really simple.  Computers count inside their case, with no oversight, just like they are told to do, unless of course, they malfunction or are hacked.  Watch Congressional testimony straight from The Programmer's Mouth: How The 2000 Election Was Fixed.

If you haven’t heard of the problems with allowing computers to count your votes, then you’re in a small minority, as in totally unaware of the biggest, most important issue in the world: whether or not citizens should control their government.  As Thomas Paine said, “Voting is the right upon which all other rights depend.”

Many organizations and individuals who are worried about the machines counting our votes have suggested that voting on an absentee ballot may be better.  At least it gives you a paper trail which is better than nothing if you live in a county that will use touch screen machines on election day.  I used to think so, too, but then I got involved in election law.  Most of the cases before computers took over were about problems with absentee ballots.

If you think about it, absentee voting is no better than voting on a touch screen because you have no way to know if your vote is counted accurately or counted at all.  You put it in the mail, and it goes behind closed doors never to be seen again unless someone brings a contest.  In addition, absentee ballots are counted in secret on optical scan computers.

Early voting came about around the time that our leaders gave us touch screen voting.  We were told it would be more convenient.  While it may sometimes be more convenient for the voter, it is also more convenient for anyone who wants to fix the election, it gives them a sample which they can use to determine how many votes that they need to flip to fix the election and it makes it much harder to track the results accurately through any exit polling effort.  How convenient? 

As a result, you should avoid voting early or by absentee ballot unless absolutely necessary!

Fortunately, absentee ballots and early voting are accounted for separately from the election day voting.  As a result, our election day exit poll effort can be used to prove that the official election day results are wrong without having to worry about the early voting or the absentee ballots. 

Dante said, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who in a time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”  Don’t stand by remaining neutral.  Remember, we most often regret the actions that we failed to take.  It’s time for all true Americans to stand up again for the right to control our government through fair elections!  Do something or accomplish nothing! 

There are many web sites, blogs, and organizations that are trying to get those in power to restore public vote counting. 

Some groups are even trying to get people to individually print out affidavits to sign and send in to help check the election results. But, it is very unlikely that enough people from any one precinct would ever send in enough affidavits to prove that the official results are wrong.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say that Ron Paul received 100 votes in a precinct, but the official results only showed that he received 85. If so, 15% of his votes disappeared and were likely added to another candidate. To prove that the official results are wrong, more than 85% of those who voted for Ron Paul in that precinct would have to print out, sign, and send in affidavits. To really make it clear that something very wrong had happened, rather than just a failure of the machines to count a couple of votes, over 90% would have to participate in such an effort. While the level of concern is that high, it is unlikely that 90% or more would make the required effort.

Certainly these efforts would likely produce thousands of affidavits and would deter theft of a large percentage of votes cast for a candidate. I urge you to participate in them as it only takes a couple of minutes and a stamp, but these efforts alone are not enough. If a smaller yet significant percentage of votes were stolen, such as 15%, it would change who took office, but it would be unlikely that enough affidavits would ever be received from a single precinct to prove the official results in that precinct were wrong.

Also, how long would it take to wade through thousands of affidavits to find that precinct? Many days at the least, but most likely weeks or months, if ever. Of course, if the number of affidavits returned for a precinct were close enough to proving that the official results were wrong, then someone from one of those organizations could go knocking on doors in that precinct to try to get affidavits from more of the people who voted.

That’s an idea that might work although it seems like a lot of effort. It is. It takes a lot of time. I know because I represented Clint Curtis, John Russell, Frank Gonzalez and others in contesting the 2006 elections in Florida. We obtained affidavits from enough voters in a number of precincts to show that at least 14% of the votes cast for Democratic Congressional candidates did not show up on the official results. Watch An Interview with Clint Curtis and the Walking for Democracy Project.

So, we gathered thousands of affidavits, and we filed contests in Florida state court and in the U.S. House of Representatives. We had proof that the election results were not accurate and that at least 14% of the votes cast for Democratic Congressional candidates did not show up on the official results.  These votes were not just lost, like in Sarasota in 2006.  They obviously were counted for the Republican candidates. 

If you’re active in the election integrity community, then you’ve heard about the contests that I handled.  If you happened to have seen one of the few articles that were run in the corporate media before they shut the information flow down on these contests or we got an affidavit from you, you may be aware of what happened with these cases if you read The Brad Blog, Scoop, Election Fraud News, or OpEdNews, but otherwise, you do not know how all of this evidence was treated.  I’m sure that you can guess by now that the law and the facts were ignored.  For more info, read How to Take Action on Holt and Fix Our Elections.

The reason that the court, Congress, and the media were able to ignore all of the affidavits was that not enough people knew about this evidence in a timely manner.  However, in the Sarasota election, hundreds noticed that their votes were not registering properly, and they wanted answers.  Too many people knew about it to cover it up.  The news came out that over 18,000 votes disappeared.  The public demanded change. 

In the long run, the Sarasota contests were also swept under the rug, but the news coverage that was received helped push Florida’s leaders to pass the law requiring paper ballots beginning with the election in August of 2008.  Of course, the new law still allows these paper ballots to be counted in secret on computers, and it has no meaningful audit requirement.  So, we still need to work to ensure election integrity in Florida.

If the Sarasota election contestants would have followed our suggestions and collected information from voters to find out what the results should have been, then Christine Jennings would likely be in Congress today, and we would probably have restored trustworthy elections in Florida and maybe throughout the country.

So, we still need to push for reform.  As you can see, I have been working on this issue for quite some time as have many others.  I discuss these issues on a daily basis with almost every leader in the election reform community through the major election integrity email lists and over the phone.  I have been involved in more Congressional election contests than any other attorney or former attorney that I know of.  I’m one of the people who is regularly asked to speak on election reform on radio shows and public access shows.  I’ve recently spoken about election integrity on Capitol Hill.

I get emails and calls from activists and concerned citizens on a regular basis. One timely call that I received led to a discovery which could result in the watershed case which does away with computers counting votes in secret in any election.  Read South Carolina Elections Are UNCONSTITUTIONAL!?!

Pretending that talk about elections being rigged will scare voters away is what the Democratic leadership has been saying for years as their excuse for failing to act.  The Republican leadership has just been pretending like there’s no problem at all with machines, but rather there's a problem with the voters cheating.  They continue to talk about voter fraud and neglect the real issue of Election Fraud!

The news media goes right along with their charade by talking about the government implementing tougher ID requirements and background checks to make sure that those bad voters don’t cheat.  I don’t recall a single prosecution for this, but I’m sure someone has done that sometime. 

Ask yourself these two questions:

1. How many voters (voting two or three times) would it take to steal an election? 
2. How many hackers does it take to steal an election?

Still, the news media in almost every story about problems with elections repeats worries that there may be voter fraud and talks about the government’s efforts to stop voter fraud.  Those messages give the public the impression that our government and the news media are on top of election problems.  Curiously, they rarely mention problems with the voting machines.  What’s the illusion that’s being created and constantly being reinforced?  "Don’t worry about problems with the elections, we’re on top of this important issue.  If there were any problems with computers counting your votes in secret, we would tell you about it and take action." Right?

Unfortunately, there is abundant evidence of problems with counting votes on computers from across our country in the last several elections.  The corporate media and the government media don’t mention these problems very often, but if you haven’t heard of them or you’re not concerned about allowing votes to be counted in secret, then you’re in the minority, a minority which is either hopelessly clueless or completely power hungry and corrupt.  

Anyone who thinks about it can understand the dangers of secret vote counting, and this is why so many are worried about allowing our votes to be counted on computers.  In fact, a Zogby poll from August of 2006 indicates that 92% of Americans are worried about our votes being counted in secret. After all of the problems with the 2006 elections, I would say that even more people are concerned today.

The unreported part of the Zogby poll is that if a person said that they weren’t a registered voter, they were asked why they did not even bother to register.  A large portion said that it was because they didn’t think that their votes were counted. 

Run For Office Yourself
As Lee Iacocca (82-year-old businessman), said "Throw the Bums Out!" in his latest book Where have all the Leaders Gone?

If you are thinking of running for office, you can also collect signatures on your petitions while you’re collecting information for our exit poll.