How can people prevent elections from being rigged?

[intelliot]

Let's say we have all the power in the world. How can we prevent elections from being rigged?

Some people are concerned that programmers will cause votes to 'accidentally' get switched for the 2012 election. What can we do to reduce this problem?

How do the polls work? Who ensures the integrity and truth of the reported results?

I am considering signing up as a Pollworker in Los Angeles (http://www.lavote.net/voter/pollworker/), which is where I live, if it might help ensure that votes are recorded accurately. Also, do you think it might be an opportunity to start learning about how the process works?

Note that I do not want to rig the election in any way, not even in Ron Paul's favor. It is important that the integrity and truth of all elections are preserved, and I am happy to live with the TRUE results, no matter what they are.

[ZanZibar]

We don't and we can't. Voter fraud is always possible.

But there are ways to minimize it...

1 - Get involved in your Party
2 - Become a vote watcher / judge / precinct worker for your local election commission
3 - Work to get the computerized voting machines eliminated in favor of a machine that prints out a recipe and gets put in the box on the way out of the voting booth.

[aGameOfThrones]

By not having them? ;)

[Bossobass]

I think the Iowa Caucuses were a perfect example in contrast vs the Ames Straw Poll.

1. The Straw Poll required photo ID. Only ticket holders who present photo identification of the following type will be allowed to vote: current and valid Iowa Driver’s License or non-operator ID, Military ID or Student Photo ID from an Iowa College/University. Those attendees with Military ID, student ID, or Passport will be required to re-register to vote before receiving their ballot.

The rules were changed for this years Caucuses. No photo ID was required.

2. At the Straw Poll ID’s will be checked at voting areas. After casting a ballot, voters will mark their index finger with indelible ink.

At the Caucuses, no ID was checked and no method was employed to prevent multiple voting.

3. A the Straw Poll, campaigns who reserved space at the Iowa Straw Poll are allowed to have one representative to observe the voting process per voting location, and up to two representatives to observe the tallying process.

At the Caucuses the tallying process was moved to a secret location, preventing campaign official oversight.

I've been looking at the evidence for the Caucuses and I have become irrevocably convinced that they were part of a huge campaign to steal the results from Ron Paul.

Interviews of GOP officials in Iowa just prior to vote day, both on TV and radio, have them stating in no uncertain terms that "The Iowa GOP will NOT allow Ron Paul to win this years Caucuses".

Polls released and reported on the day before the Caucuses had Ron in 1st place with 30%. CNN exit polls showed Ron in first place with... yes, 30%. He ended up in 3rd placed, losing 1st place by more than the polls margin of error.


... the last poll before the election showed Rick Santorum in 2nd, way ahead of Ron Paul when in fact it was the other way round....

On Saturday evening Politico incorrectly reported that the poll showed former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum “climbing to second [place] at 21 percent and Ron Paul in third, with 18 percent.” In fact, Paul took second place with 22 percent of the vote. Santorum was third with 15 percent.

From a reporter:


Ron Paul was on the rise and many pundits were calling for Paul in advance of Tuesday’s results. So, what happened? As one fervent political watcher told this reporter in the hours after the results, “Just look at Rand Paul’s face, as he stood next to his father on Caucus Night. Rand knows something. He did not look happy. I think he is convinced it was stolen from his dad.”

Reporters stationed at Coralville Precinct 6 wrote "...seemed to have a lot of “activity” going on. They were the largest – and last – precinct to release their ballot results. It is interesting to note that the Coralville “super-caucus” started late because of the several hundred newly-registered Republican voters coming through the door. It was curious and while Red Dirt Report has no proof of chicanery, it was clear from all the buttons, stickers and signs supporting Paul that he was far-and-above the most popular candidate amongst Coralville Republicans.

"At the “super-caucus” in Coralville, Iowa, just outside Iowa City, there was not a single Romney sign visible in or around the large conference center, yet he would go on to win, despite the Ron Paul signs outnumbering the Rick Santorum and Rick Perry signs 7 to 1."


But back to the Ron Paul supporters. In the Iowa City area, Ron Paul was the only candidate to have an actual campaign office, which also happened to be manned largely by young people. Ron Paul political signs were everywhere.

Romney wins Coralville

Then there was the live feed from CNN looking for results from 2 counties that were missing. They woke the Clinton county chairperson from sleeping at 1:30AM to ask where the results were. She said "I turned the results in at 7:48PM. She was upset and wanted to know why they were asking her for the results.

She eventually confirmed 51 more votes for Mr Romney and 33 for Mr Santorum. But there was further confusion as Mrs Pfeffer was told by the CNN anchor that her vote count was different to a figure provided by the state party.

"What do you mean they don't match up?!" she asked.

Then there was the Fox News report 10 minutes later at 1:40AM: "The ballots are missing, but Romney wins by 14 votes".

Which brings us to:

4. The Ames Straw Poll has provisions for a recount.

In contrast, the Caucuses, according to Iowa GOP officials If the results of the Iowa caucuses are too close to call, they'll stay that way.
Iowa state GOP official Doug Heye said Tuesday there will be no recount,

The above rules changes allowed for multiple voting to go undetected. You could show up at a precinct, vote and proceed to another precinct and vote and rinse and repeat. Ron lost by an average of 2 votes per precinct. Iowans interviewed after the vote were generally shocked to hear Santorum tied for 1st. It would be irrelevant that a campaign had observers to oversee the vote count because they would have no idea who voted where and how many times. They could only observe the count after the votes were cast.

One or two coincidences can be written off as coincidence. As many "coincidences" as there are with this years Caucuses (and I've only posted a fraction of them here), coupled with the tally results, well, I'm not that bright but I'm not a moron.

You can easily make an election very hard to fix by more than an insignificant number. You can easily expose any illegal vote machinations by allowing for a simple recount.

I agree with the above poster that the electronic voting machines have to go. They've been proven to be easily tampered with with no detectable trace, through sworn testimony to Congress.

New Hampshire will be worse. There was verified vote count errors and ballot box tampering, recorded on video and audio in the 2007 primary.

Bosso

[djinwa]

I say they're rigged before they're held, considering how the media manipulates the masses. They ignore the one they deem unelectable, thereby limiting the people's awareness of the options. And they distort the views of the one they don't like.

A university dept of political science or journalism should do a study on this fraud, but we know where their funding comes from.

[HOLLYWOOD]

1.) We knew we had 30,000 votes minimum.
2.) I posted about one of the county chairman bad mouthing Ron on C-SPAN for the 45 minutes he was on. Saying he was neutral, then every chance he had, back to slammin Paul. I posted about this here on RPF.
3.) I watched the tallies come in live on the counties; Dallas, Dubuque, Polk, Story. I watched Polk go from a 100 vote PAUL lead to a 1200 deficit in 15-20 minutes(1300 vote swing) similarities of swings in the other counties. My posts were pointing this out in the chat room to people.
4.) Never have I seen anyone as pissed as Rand Paul on stage when Ron spoke. He was livid... barely could clap with the supporters. He knew this win was stolen.

http://iowagop.org/


I think the Iowa Caucuses were a perfect example in contrast vs the Ames Straw Poll.

At the Caucuses the tallying process was moved to a secret location, preventing campaign official oversight.

I've been looking at the evidence for the Caucuses and I have become irrevocably convinced that they were part of a huge campaign to steal the results from Ron Paul.

Interviews of GOP officials in Iowa just prior to vote day, both on TV and radio, have them stating in no uncertain terms that "The Iowa GOP will NOT allow Ron Paul to win this years Caucuses".

Polls released and reported on the day before the Caucuses had Ron in 1st place with 30%. CNN exit polls showed Ron in first place with... yes, 30%. He ended up in 3rd placed, losing 1st place by more than the polls margin of error.



From a reporter:



Reporters stationed at Coralville Precinct 6 wrote "...seemed to have a lot of “activity” going on. They were the largest – and last – precinct to release their ballot results. It is interesting to note that the Coralville “super-caucus” started late because of the several hundred newly-registered Republican voters coming through the door. It was curious and while Red Dirt Report has no proof of chicanery, it was clear from all the buttons, stickers and signs supporting Paul that he was far-and-above the most popular candidate amongst Coralville Republicans.

"At the “super-caucus” in Coralville, Iowa, just outside Iowa City, there was not a single Romney sign visible in or around the large conference center, yet he would go on to win, despite the Ron Paul signs outnumbering the Rick Santorum and Rick Perry signs 7 to 1."



Romney wins Coralville

Then there was the live feed from CNN looking for results from 2 counties that were missing. They woke the Clinton county chairperson from sleeping at 1:30AM to ask where the results were. She said "I turned the results in at 7:48PM. She was upset and wanted to know why they were asking her for the results.

She eventually confirmed 51 more votes for Mr Romney and 33 for Mr Santorum. But there was further confusion as Mrs Pfeffer was told by the CNN anchor that her vote count was different to a figure provided by the state party.

"What do you mean they don't match up?!" she asked.

Then there was the Fox News report 10 minutes later at 1:40AM: "The ballots are missing, but Romney wins by 14 votes".

Which brings us to:

4. The Ames Straw Poll has provisions for a recount.

In contrast, the Caucuses, according to Iowa GOP officials If the results of the Iowa caucuses are too close to call, they'll stay that way.
Iowa state GOP official Doug Heye said Tuesday there will be no recount,

The above rules changes allowed for multiple voting to go undetected. You could show up at a precinct, vote and proceed to another precinct and vote and rinse and repeat. Ron lost by an average of 2 votes per precinct. Iowans interviewed after the vote were generally shocked to hear Santorum tied for 1st. It would be irrelevant that a campaign had observers to oversee the vote count because they would have no idea who voted where and how many times. They could only observe the count after the votes were cast.

One or two coincidences can be written off as coincidence. As many "coincidences" as there are with this years Caucuses (and I've only posted a fraction of them here), coupled with the tally results, well, I'm not that bright but I'm not a moron.

You can easily make an election very hard to fix by more than an insignificant number. You can easily expose any illegal vote machinations by allowing for a simple recount.

I agree with the above poster that the electronic voting machines have to go. They've been proven to be easily tampered with with no detectable trace, through sworn testimony to Congress.

New Hampshire will be worse. There was verified vote count errors and ballot box tampering, recorded on video and audio in the 2007 primary.

Bosso

[Philhelm]

By not having them? ;)

Beat me to it.

[RickyJ]

But that facebook post from Ron Paul's campaign said they were on top of it and were watching for voter fraud. If there was that much voter fraud going on in Iowa, how come we haven't heard anything from them about it yet? Are they waiting until after the NH primary to speak out?

We are going to need some concrete proof. That's why I thought it was a good idea to have few more people watching the vote, taking pictures, recording vote totals, videos, random polls of people there etc, to determine if voter fraud took place or not.

[intelliot]

Philhelm, your signature says "Restore the Republic". How can we have a Republic if we do not have elections?

[John F Kennedy III]

Iowa has proven that we need to find a way to keep them from rigging it.

THEY FLAT OUT STOLE IOWA.