OT: wanted, election night volunteer observers

[Mark Phillips]

On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 10:37 PM, Jim March <1.jim.march at gmail.com> wrote:

> Folks,
>
> What we need are two different types of volunteers, all registered AZ
> voters:
>
> 1) Those willing to work later into the night (starting at 7:00pm,
> going maybe to 11:00pm or later?) monitoring the 22 "regional
> receiving stations" where ballots come in from the field for modem
> uploads to the central tabulator.  A recent Princeton study of a
> similar-tech-era Sequoia product in New Jersey says the memory
> cartridges ("electronic ballot boxes") can be hacked as there's zero
> crypto on the pack.  Worse, the boxes and bags in which the ballot
> materials are shipped are absolutely pathetic in terms of physical
> access security.  If possible, these people should have camcorders.
>
> 2) Those able to pull only a shorter shift can visit a polling place
> as it closes and photograph the end-of-day vote tallies as they come
> out of the precinct voting machines...before those votes can be hacked
> either in-route via memory card manipulation or at the central
> tabulator's MS-SQL database.  These people need a decent (4 megapixel
> or better) still-image camera, to be used ONLY after all the voters
> are done (important!).


Jim,

First of all, I applaud your efforts and support them. I also agree that
there is a huge potential for voter fraud in this election.

However, I am curious as to the legality of photographing the people who are
handling the votes as well as the actual voting "cartridges". Who actually
owns the cartridges when they leave the machines, and who runs the "central
receiving" stations? Unless you have a signed release from all the people
working at these facilities, I don't think you have the legal right to video
tape them. However, I am not an attorney, so I am really speaking out of
turn on this issue.

What kind of reception will these volunteers receive when they show up with
a video camera to record the process? Given the huge voter turnout expected,
I would assume that there will be a lot of time pressure on the folks who
are processing the cartridges, and additional bodies standing around taking
pictures may not be a welcome distraction.

Also, since none of your volunteers may not be familiar with the steps used
in processing the cartridges, how will they know if something is amiss or
not?

Thanks again for your efforts. I am not trying to throw cold water on them
by any means. I agree that we, as voters, have the moral right to
observe/record the steps used to process our votes. However, I assume there
are legal issues involved with going to a place of business and
photographing/observing what goes on there. How will your volunteers get
around these legal issues?

Mark
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