B i s m i l l a a h i r R a h m a a n i r R a h e e m Assalaamu`Alaykum wa Rahmatullaahi wa Barakaatahu,
Without Prejudice Dear Brothers and Sisters, USA Constituents/Voters in respective districts, Some of you may already know this, but please forward to Muslim voters and others who may not know! For those of you who normally vote "Straight Democratic", please read the following information. I was informed this weekend that when voting for the Presidential candidate this November 2008, you have to make sure you punch Obama Barack's name first, then proceed to punch "Straight Democratic" or else the vote for the President won't count. This applies also to those of you voting for "Straight Republican." This is confirmed to be true in a 2004 Snopes "Urban Legends" page regarding the Bush/Cheney election! The information is attached below. I have also attached below the following information: Report Card: How States Fix Voting Machine Issues Friday, 17 October 2008, 4:00 pm Press Release: Joint Press Release States Get Mixed Reviews on Readiness for Voting Machine Problems Joint Press Release: Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause and Verified Voting Please make sure you inform others - they won't tell them this at the polls. Wa`Assalaamu`Alaykum wa Rahmatullaahi wa Barakaatahu, Your sister, K a r i m a DDN -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/travis.asp Li'l Mismarker Claim: A Texas woman who cast her vote for all Democratic candidates discovered her ballot marked for Bush/Cheney. Status: True. Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2004] Yesterday a friend voted early at a polling location in Austin. She voted straight Democratic. When she did the final check, lo and behold every vote was for the Democratic candidates except that it showed she had voted for Bush/Cheney for president/vice pres. She immediately got a poll official. On her vote, it was corrected. She called the Travis County Democratic headquarters. They took all her information, and told her that she wasn't the first to report a similar incident and that they are looking into it. So check before you leave the polling booth, and if anything is wrong, get it corrected immediately. Report any irregularities to your local Democratic headquarters. Make sure you pass this along to your friends ... hopefully this is all over the airwaves by tomorrow ... Origins: As political rumors and tales of wrongdoing go, this one is a bit of an odd duck in that while everything reported in the widely circulated alert is true, the underlying message of the piece that someone or something has been deliberately tampering with the election process for the nefarious purpose of guaranteeing a win for a particular political party isn't. In 2004, some of those voting in the advance polls held in Travis County, Texas, experienced an unusual result: after selecting the straight Democratic ticket, the ballot summaries subsequently displayed on their screens indicated they were about to vote for George W. Bush. This perplexing turn of events was the result of poorly designed balloting software colliding with voter error. As well as the candidates' names, a referendum item for a $60 million commuter line was also on the ballot, displayed at the end. Those who chose to vote for a single party by way of selecting the 'straight ticket' option on the eSlate voting machines in use in that district still had to scroll to the end of the ballot to find the referendum. However, because that measure was off-screen, some voters failed to realize it was there, prompting some who opted for the straight ticket to prematurely attempt to complete the process by hitting the enter button rather than the next page button. According to elections division manager Gail Fisher, hitting 'enter' rather than 'next page' caused selections to redistribute in the following manner: "If someone casts a Democratic ticket, they're seeing that the change switches from the first position on the ballot, which is a Bush/Cheney ticket. If they cast a Republican straight party ticket, what they see is that first position in the presidential contest switches back to a 'No' selection." The Travis County Clerks Office issued an official statement about the re-marking phenomenon that is slightly at odds with the explanation offered above in that it provides an additional scenario for how this odd result comes about: When pressing enter after marking a straight-party vote, it appears that a handful of voters have inadvertently turned the select wheel to highlight the first position of the presidential race and then hit the enter button, which selects or de-selects the first position. Thankfully, a ballot summary page appears on the screen before the ballot is cast, which gives those using the eSlate machines a chance to review their selections before making them final. Those who had experienced such a shift were able to get the matter straightened out and so cast their votes for their candidates of choice. News accounts about the machines that produced this effect indicated they had since been taken out of service in Travis County so as to not contribute to further polling confusion on election day, but we've since heard from a voter in that district that he cast his ballot on one such mechanical marvel subsequent to the supposed removal. However, whatever the status of the machines, when the problem surfaced at those advance polls, it didn't amount to the widespread scourge one might have thought it would have been: out of the approximately 70,000 who cast their ballots by 23 October 2004 in that district, election officials received only about 12 calls reporting the problem. Remember, voters could not complete the polling process without first viewing a summary screen listing all their choices and from it issuing the command to make their ballots final. Last updated: 2 November 2004 The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/travis.asp -------------------------------------------------------------- Sources: Alexander, Kate. "Election Officials Urge Voters to Check Ballots for Errors." Austin American-Statesman. 23 October 2004 (p. B1). Keith, James. "Voter Oversight Causing Problems in Travis County." News 8 Austin. 22 October 2004. Associated Press. "Voter Oversight Causing Problems in Travis County." 22 October 2004. Travis County, County Clerk, Elections Division. "Straight-Party Voting." 22 October 2004. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0810/S00350.htm Report Card: How States Fix Voting Machine Issues Friday, 17 October 2008, 4:00 pm Press Release: Joint Press Release States Get Mixed Reviews on Readiness for Voting Machine Problems Joint Press Release: Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause and Verified Voting 10/16/08 For Immediate Release: Citing Improvements, Election Experts Call for Backup Measures to Secure the Vote on Nov 4th. With millions of Americans expected to confront an array of voting technologies on Nov. 4, today election administration experts from the Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause and Verified Voting issued a 50-state report card that grades each state on its preparedness for election system breakdowns and offers concrete steps election officials can take in the weeks before the election to make sure every vote is counted accurately. The report, Is America Ready to Vote? State Preparations for Voting Machine Problems in 2008 (click here for publication page), finds that many states have made dramatic improvements in their voting systems, but nevertheless urges election officials to have backup measures in placelike emergency paper ballots and sound ballot counting proceduresto ensure the integrity of the vote. "There's no question that in the last few years, election officials around the country have made dramatic improvements that will make it much less likely that voters are disenfranchised due to voting system failures," said Lawrence Norden, director of the Voting Technology Project at the Brennan Center. "Unfortunately, there is still much work to be done to ensure that every voter will get to vote and every vote will be counted if something goes wrong with voting systems on Election Day," he stated. Is America Ready to Vote? evaluates each state by four criteria: procedures for issuing emergency paper ballots, reconciling ballot tallies, providing paper records of votes cast, and post-election audits. The report reveals a broad range of preparedness across the country to address Election Day voting system meltdowns. For example: Of the twenty-four states that use voting machines, eight states, including Colorado and Virginia, have no guidance or requirement to stock emergency paper ballots at the polls. In contrast, twelve states, including Ohio and North Carolina, recommend emergency paper ballots to be given to voters if machine failures are causing long lines. While all states do some form of ballot accounting and reconciliation, the 50-state report card finds that the requirements in nine states (Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, New Jersey, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia) fall far short of best practicesmeaning there are insufficient provisions to make sure that every vote is counted, and only once. 28 states get "inadequate" on post-election audits because they lack paper records from which to conduct audits (like Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia) or because they do not mandate manual audits even where paper is available (like Michigan, Montana and others). "In every national election since 2000, we have seen voting system failures stem from machines that won't start, memory cards that can't be read, mis-tallied votes, lost votes and more. As this report shows, most states have not adopted laws and procedures to effectively address an election system meltdown. This will hopefully be a last-minute wake-up call to jurisdictions that aren't prepared for an election system failure," said Susannah Goodman, Common Cause's director of election reform. Is America Ready to Vote? comes in the wake of several highly publicized voting system problems this election cycle: In the Republican presidential primary in Horry County, South Carolina, touch screen machines in 80% of precincts temporarily failed, and a number of precincts ran out of paper ballots and sent voters to cast provisional ballots at other precincts. In Ohio's March 2008 primary, votes in at least 11 counties were "dropped" when memory cards were uploaded to computer servers due to a software flaw; In the August 26, 2008 primary in Palm Beach County Florida, several votes in a judicial contest disappeared during a recount, and then reappeared in a second and third recount, flipping the outcome to a different winner each time; In the September 9, 2008 primary in Washington D.C., three different counts produced three different vote totals, with thousands of "phantom votes" appearing in the first two counts. "Our elections are so complex and involve so many jurisdictions, technologies, voters, poll workers, technicians and election workers that some concerns are inevitable. As the machinery of our democracy becomes more complicated, however, the opportunity for error increasesand we should be prepared," said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting Foundation. Just this week North Carolina made a significant adjustment to their post-election audit procedures which will increase security and reliability of the audit. This change means that North Carolina's audit rating moves from "Needs Improvement" to "Generally Good," and that North Carolina is now among the six states that have instituted the best policies and procedures to prepare for voting system problems. Is America Ready to Vote? offers best practices for each criteria, many of which can be implemented in time for the November 4th election: Use of Emergency Paper Ballots. States that use voting machines or lever machines should require all precincts to provide emergency paper ballots in the case of broken machines or long lines caused by poor machine allocation. Sound Ballot Accounting and Vote Reconciliation. At the close of polls on election night, all polling places and county offices should follow sound ballot accounting practices to ensure that a software glitch or poll worker error does not leave some votes uncounted or mis-tallied. Precincts should make sure the number of ballots cast matches the number of voters who have voted, and that any discrepancies are reconciled so no votes are lost. Use of a Voter Verifiable Paper Record. Nearly every state in the country uses some form of electronic voting machine, but twenty-two states use machines that have no voter-verifiable paper record. In the face of corrupt software or programming errors, election officials should have a paper record of every ballot cast to make sure all votes are counted. Post-Election Audit of Voter Verifiable Paper Record. After the election, states should hold a mandatory comparison of some percentage of the paper ballots to electronic totals to ensure that the totals and specific votes reported by voting machines are accurate. "Every national election since 2000 has shown us the same thing: voting systems do fail. But we should not have to wait, as we have too often in the past, for a system failure to cause the loss of thousands of votes, or shake the public's confidence in the fairness and accuracy of our elections, before we adopt the best procedures to prevent such meltdowns. We urge states to do what they can to improve their procedures in the remaining weeks before the election," concluded Norden. The Brennan Center, Common Cause and Verified Voting are members of Election Protection, the nation's largest non-partisan voter protection coalition. Voters who experience problems with voting machines or other issues should contact the Election Protection hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE or online at http://www.866ourvote.org/. The full report can be viewed here: http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/is_america_ready_to_vote. Reporters should check all stories off this final version due to copy edit errors corrected for since the embargoed, draft version was released yesterday. For information about voting systems in use or on other issues that could cause problems on Election Day, including voter registration rolls, ballot design, voter challenges and more, visit: The Brennan Center for Justice at http://www.brennancenter.org/ Common Cause at http://www.commoncause.org/VotingIn2008Report Verified Voting at http://verifiedvoting.org/verifier -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ To subscribe send email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://islammyreligion.wordpress.com Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/muslim/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/muslim/join (Yahoo! 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