Presidential Election Protection

Here’s some great post-election news!

Last Tuesday Voter Action engaged in election protection and monitoring efforts in various targeted states across the country. With the support of volunteer monitors and legal support working out of their Seattle and New York headquarters, they reviewed data from InfoVoter Technologies being fed by two national hotlines: the MYVOTE1 hotline and the CNN hotline (877-GOCNN08). There were over 41,000 calls on the CNN line alone!

Here are three key victories from Voter Action from last week:

· With this monitoring, and with the support of volunteer lawyers from several law firms, they were able to reach out to local and state election officials in a number of states to further report these voting problems and to seek remedies on Election Day. Their press release issued during the election on this election monitoring activity can be found here.

· Citizens from a variety of backgrounds became a key component in reclaiming their elections process and in working with local elections officials in order to serve the voters and deal with problems on Election Day. Voter Action partnerships with state-based groups in New Mexico (Voter Action volunteers), Colorado (through a partnership with Common Cause), Maryland (Save Our Votes), Pennsylvania (through Voter Action networks and Common Cause), North Carolina, Indiana, and Florida (through Common Cause), created on-the-ground verification networks that assisted in following up on data reported to the hotlines and that identified voting problems from the field.

· Examples of their Election Day protection work include: accessing dry ballots for a polling location so that they could be scanned and people could continue to vote (NC); clarifying voting rules and regulations regarding absentee and provisional ballots (NM); ensuring voters were able to vote on paper ballots when machines were down (PA); providing voters and poll workers with advice on how to find voters’ names in the county voter rolls when there was exclusion in the state database (NM); addressing voter intimidation tactics towards Hispanic voters (CO); and alerting the public safety board when a polling location was shut down because of a gas leak (PA).

Congratulations to Voter Action for a job well done!