Protect Your Vote - Carry This Number

On Friday, Paul Nyden of the Charleston Gazette reported some problems with electronic voting machines in West Virginia -- where several early voters pressing "Obama" on the touch screens, had their votes registered as "McCain."

The voting issues were explained as miscalibration problems caused by moving the machines, or as user error in how the finger pressed the touch screen.

In 2006, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., writing for Rolling Stone magazine, described the many documented problems in the 2004 Presidential vote. In 2004, the Brad Blog reported on Clint Curtis, a software engineer who claimed he had designed an undetectable program to rig the vote. A 2004 Wire Magazine article also carried that story. And the video of Curtis's testimony is available on You Tube.

In a previous post, I cited the recent New York Times article reporting that legitimate voters were being purged from rolls in some states. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that some California voters were misled into registering as Republicans when they thought they were signing a petition.

Any election is prone to certain anomalies, including human error. But unscrupulous tricks, serious vote discrepancies, and the lack, in many cases, of a verifiable paper account of an electronic vote is a troubling and unacceptable way to exercise our most important democratic right.

In practical terms, for the November 2008 election in California -- what do you do if you find yourself at the polls and your legitimacy to vote is contested? Or you recognize that your vote is not being registered properly?

1. First, check ahead of time to make sure you are registered through your County Elections office.
2. Second, take this phone number with you: 866-OUR-VOTE -- from the nonpartisan Election Protection coalition. You can also visit their website for more information at www.866ourvote.org. (See their California-specific page here.)
3. California also has a Voter Fraud Hotline you can call: (800) 345-8683 (VOTE).

If you're interested in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s work on the election fraud issue, he has a website called No Voter Left Behind.