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Elections, Politics, and Partisanship Topics relating to politics, elections, or party affiliations of interests to SOS associates |
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Precinct Diary
Precinct Diary
Many Californians, including those who have fled the state for various reasons, believe that voter fraud is rampant in this state's elections. You can't blame them, what with very little high profile prosecutions of that type of crime to rest assured by. Add to that the unforgettable Bob Dornan event in southern CA, and a few other notable, but less known controversies where some known illegals bragged about voting in our elections, and you can easily see how these beliefs become accepted as probabilities. One of the problems that fuels these controversies is that our elected and appointed officials do very little to disprove them, and the investigative process remains closed to public inspection. This leaves few options to obtain facts, but a thirst for truth can drive a person to new heights in investigation. I thought it best to start learning from the inside of the election system for a change, and there certainly is opportunity available for that. Volunteering as a poll worker for your county registrar. I say "volunteer" because although there is a stipend to receive for your work, it is demeaningly insufficient when compared to the hours worked, and your state's minimum wage. It's basically 16 hours of work, and three more hours of training for $125.00 US. Yeah, that's right; six-something an hour. It's better to tell people you're a volunteer so you can salvage that bit of dignity as opposed to dwelling on the fact that the legislature believes that anyone volunteering to work an election is obviously stupid enough to do it for peanuts. Trust me; when the check comes, tell everyone you did it for free, and they just made a mistake and paid you anyway. The training consists of a three hour class held at the registrars office, or various other locations around your county. There is an option to take an online course that might take you less than two hours, but then you still have to take a "hands on" training course for an hour somewhere. I opted for the latter. I was able to rocket through the on line course, and then take the hands-on the next day. Neither of these courses prepared me adequately for what was expected of us on election day, so they issue us a manual to keep by our side. I had to refer to this often. There's a plethora of procedures, logs, audits, seals, electronic devices, booths, forms, and placards that must be posted, activated, counted, sealed, and adhered to throughout the day. Voters expect you to be professional, so as not to shake confidence in the process. On election day, I arrived at my post at 6:00 am. (ok, I was 5 minutes late). To my surprise, it turned out that the inspector had already set up the polling booths and some tables the night before. This was a welcomed maneuver, as we still had to set up all the machines, forms and familiarize ourselves with the process again. There was supposed to be five of us, but we had a no-show. Thankfully he was not a crucial link. Besides myself, there was the inspector, a woman slightly younger than myself, a young girl not quite old enough to vote this election, and an 80 year old Filipino gentlemen who spoke Tagalog, but had a strong accent, weak voice, and bad hearing. We all got along well though, and we immediately fell into preferred tasks without any coercion. the younger girl met the voters and looked them up on the roster. The older guy verified their addresses. His accent, weak voice and bad hearing was often off-putting to many voters, but they tolerated it. My job was primarily issuing ballots, ripping off the stubs, and directing them to the poll booths. When they were done voting, I helped them feed the ballots into the scanner, retrieve the secrecy sleeves, and passed out the "I voted" stickers. I also answered voters questions from time to time. The voters started early; shortly after 7:00 am, but they straggled in. We never had a waiting line, and there were 20 minute intervals all the time where we did make-work things. No foolin' this was a slow day. We had 84 ballot voters, one being a provisional. Then, there were numerous people that hand carried in their mail in ballots. I guess it was procrastination. The majority of these voters were middle aged to old. Hardly any youth at all. One older couple struggled with the voting process to the point of over voting and under-voting . We offered to issue another ballot, but that was refused. We did not have any issues with the machines at all. Everything performed flawlessly. The manuals described the process to administer the HAVA voters, and that's where I feel abuse potential exists. First time voters must show ID. But basically, any old ID is allowed. There is nothing to reject. Sam's club card will work. that's how weak it is. The theory is that someone downtown has already verified the registrant's citizenship, and you are just verifying that it's that person. But really, I doubt too much effort is being placed on verifying anything downtown, and Sam's club doesn't ask for proof of anything when they issue you a card, so I'd say it's wide open for abuse until there's a challenge. The Dornan fiasco should show the potential for abuse of the process. Illegals registered, and voted, and nobody was the wiser until the candidate demanded a recount, During the recount, it was discovered that several voters were not citizens. That whole controversy could have been used to demonstrate that voter fraud will not b tolerated or even accepted, but no one was prosecuted, and to add fuel to the disbelief, the candidates own party hierarchy told the candidate not to make a big deal out of it. Let's face it; fraud is not a big deal where votes are concerned. Our system discourages illegals and non-citizens from voting, but also discourages anyone from proving illegal voters. Moving on to the voters themselves, I mentioned they were primarily older folks. Some real old. Walking slow, voting slow, and making multiple errors. Upon scanning them, over-votes and under-votes were common, and none of them wanted to be issued a new ballot as a do-over. It was the process...the act of voting that they were there for. One woman brought in her union recommended voter cheat sheet, and called me over to find out why so many names from her list weren't on her ballot. I did my best to explain that the union list she was provided was for all of her union, probably statewide, and that she was only voting for the ones running in her district. this morning, the day after the election, people are amazed that disgraced senator Leland Yee got 287,000 votes, after he was arrested and suspended from the senate. It's not surprising when you consider the immigrant voters in this state that identify with him, and then factor in the language barrier, communications, and the age of them. In a nutshell, there are easily a half million aged Asians stumbling through daily life in California, living in old folks homes, relative's quarters, or by themselves, feeble minded from age and disease, but still getting a ballot. Add to that Yee was arrested in late march, and mail in ballots were received at voter's homes in late May. That's barely 60 days of news coverage, and when you are living in a small world confined to a few friends, park benches, and Chinese TV reruns, your hearing and vision impairments could cause you to pick up only a few bits and pieces like the candidate name. I'm not shocked at all now. I've seen it up close A woman walked in in the late afternoon and flashed a badge and ID, and asked questions of the inspector of our precinct. (there's one inspector and three clerks). After a brief exchange with the inspector, I asked if I could see her badge. Upon examination, it was a badge issued by the secretary of state's office, and she was a fraud investigator. I asked if she was a sworn law enforcement officer, and she stated she was an actual peace officer. She asked if I was a "badge buff" like a collector or similar, and I responded no, but I wanted to understand how the state works in relation to elections. she advised me that there are only 3 sworn badge wearing fraud investigators like her in the WHOLE state. Her ID stated "Fraud investigator". I don't know what is less comforting; the thought that there are so few people investigating election fraud in the whole state, or that out of three officers in the whole state, one came to check up on us. It's probably a luck of the draw thing, but in the back of my mind I couldn't help but wonder if there was any relation to the Save Our State effort I performed in checking the oath of affirmations of each and every county registrar employee last year. I remember that whole thing kind of startled them. Ahh....it's probably just a coincidence Closing out the polls was a chore. There a ton of work to do taking everything apart, boxing it up, running counts, tapes, auditing, tallies, securing bags and boxes, and preparing to ship the ballots and computer chips. There is a significant paper trail her, and an electronic one too. the ballots have to match the memory chip. You must dig out the write-in ballots, and our scanner said we had 4. We found them after going through the stacks 3 separate times, ballot A and Ballot B, both sides. We kept missing one because the voter marked the slot, but then didn't write anyone in. I could say you have opportunity to examine ballots there, but by then everyone just wants to go home, and you are pushing to get the work done. but I could see a less principled group having access to too much information. You take oath, but as we know from Leland Yee experience, and so many others, the oath don't mean squat to crooks and cheats. I was with a good crew, and we all took it seriously. Each of us made errors that another caught and helped correct. I wonder though how many of our type were manning these precincts, I am aware of bigger boobs than us, because I voted at a different polls myself, and thought that the case there. We were from good areas too. What goes on in the hood I can only fear. What was also circulating was news that the county was short of people to operate the polls. We got everything out, although we had to stop and refer to the manual numerous times.....re-reading it often to get its' meaning. I must assume there were polls that fouled this up badly here and there. One thing that bugs me from the ending experience is that I left while the inspector and a witness drove to the drop-off point with the chip and the ballots for counting again. That was about 9:30 pm. I got home in 15 minutes, and the news was already calling some races. Now there's no way in hell that the country had received all the votes from all the polls and had them tallied up and distributed to news networks in that time frame. Add to that the bozo factor I described in many or at least some of the polls' management. We got out early for the most part, so a lot of votes were left un-tallied while the news was already proclaiming the victors. Don't like that at all folks. That should be a crime. Anyway, in closing, I'd like to encourage everyone to do this. We need eyes and ears to find out the truth. There could be fraud, it could be minuscule to great, and the only way we'll be certain is to build a network within. I'll also let in that I was not feeling from the morning until the afternoon, and suffered serious hearing loss along with other symptoms of Meniere's disease, but I had too much invested in the day, and too much ego to fail and call in sick. I'm coping with this, but what a day to feel bad. No one knew but me it seemed, although I stumbled and wavered in front of them once, I just chuckled and said..."Damn, I haven't even started drinking yet". That line seems to put folks nearby at ease anyway Last edited by Ayatollahgondola; 06-04-2014 at 08:04 PM. |
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Thank you for your efforts and thank you for the report Ayatollah. I'm glad that we've got a few of our people monitoring some of the polls.
Best regards, Greg |
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Freibier gab's gestern Hay burros en el maiz RAP IS TO MUSIC WHAT ETCH-A-SKETCH IS TO ART Don't drink and post. "A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat." - Old New York Yiddish Saying "You can observe a lot just by watching." Yogi Berra Old journeyman commenting on young apprentices - "Think about it, these are their old days" SOMETIMES IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. Never, ever, wear a bright colored shirt to a stand up comedy show. Last edited by ilbegone; 06-04-2014 at 09:59 PM. |
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When I "volunteered" as a vote clerk it was in 2002 (I think is was that year) or could have been 2000. But we did our training at the Reagan Library and we were told during training to check everyone's ID, which I did for everyone that voted. Back then checking for ID's was an acceptable practice. I don't remember if they told us to check the ID's to make the process go faster because we could check their name off the rolls quicker when the name was written down in front of us, or if it was to prevent fraud. Back then there wasn't much talk about fraud and I didn't ponder why we were to check their ID's, we were just told to.
And an Inspector also came by while I was there. I only did that once and for the same reason you did AG, I wanted to see how the process worked. What a difference it is from today. |
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My first time seeing those new drivers's licenses too. |
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I don't think there was much turn out because this seemed to be one of the sneak elections they run.
Well they used to anyway. When I was a kid I noticed two types. The big elections where you heard all about them before they pulled them off on the news and stuff. Then there were the sneak elections they used to pass thing like bond measures for the school budget. You never heard a peep about them in the paper or on the news. At school they would remind every child to make sure and remind your parents about the election tonight. They might even give you a note to take home or pin it to you. This election seemed a lot like that. Even my polling place was hid off the beaten trail. From the results they came up with it looks like enough people showed up that aren't TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY. |
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This is what I mean about a sneak election.
This story is from my county; Alameda. Californian county votes for tax in health services measure for illegal immigrants BERKELEY Calif. (Reuters) - Voters in California's Alameda County passed a measure on Tuesday that is expected to raise $100 million a year for health clinics for illegal immigrants, who are excluded from state programs and the federal Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. On May 23 a measure to include illegal immigrants in the state's Medi-Cal program for the poor to residents who are undocumented stalled in the state senate, and immigration reform proposals have also stalled in U.S. Congress for the past year. The measure extends a 0.5 percent sales tax to fund the clinics to 2034 from 2019. "Our elected officials, our constituents, and our health authority see healthcare as a basic human right, to be provided regardless of immigration status," Alex Briscoe, Director of the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency, said. About 7 percent of California's population - 2.6 million people - are undocumented, and in 2012 the state spent more than $600 million on emergency room and other health-related services alone for people living in the state illegally. Many of those who used the facilities in the past will now be eligible for insurance under Obamacare or the Medi-Cal program, leaving a potential funding gap for the clinics that are already struggling to meet the needs of patients expected to be increasingly those without documents or health insurance. Alameda County, which includes the cities of Berkeley and Oakland east of San Francisco, funds health care services for about 50,000 undocumented residents at the clinics. The measure passed by a nearly 3-to-1 margin with all precincts reporting results early on Wednesday. http://news.yahoo.com/californian-co...110607700.html |
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Measure AA - Alameda County
Needs 2/3 majority Yes votes to pass Total Precincts: 1119 Precincts Reported: 1119 Percent Reported: 100.00 Contest # of Votes % of Total Yes 127451 74.91 No 42697 25.09 Alameda county population estimate 1,578,891. According to these figures 1 out 9 decided to spend the other peoples money. I surprised at the figures that that many people voted! |
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Seattle no better
I've worked both in the polls and at the county elections office, and found a lot of errors were getting through. The scanner we used at the polls counted 85 ballots and we could only find 84. The people working the polls were regulars - a clannish group of elderly people. One of them would go thru the write in candidates and bitch if someone wrote "mickey mouse" or "bozo", which happens more often than you know. This was not her business, if you think Bozo is a better candidate than what's running, it's your business.
The manager at county elections told me to scan in people who had voted but hadn't signed the poll book (this is illegal). Apparently the people at some of the polling places did not take care to make sure voters signed the poll book. I saw one of the admin people in the room which housed the main frame computer which tallies all the votes BY HIMSELF and that is against the rules - it's always two people. The Diebold software was flawed and had not been tested for errors. etc, etc... Read the book Votescam. |
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