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Candidates:
What You and Your Supporters Can Do Right Now To Help Achieve an Accurate Election
Note to Voters and Others:
Many of the items below can be accomplished by one person or a
small group, and will benefit your community and beyond.
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Review this list and choose projects to undertake.
Assess ballot design for fairness and usability. Visit election offices in the
jurisdiction(s) in which you are on the ballot (if you are a candidate) or in which you vote.
Ask to review the ballot design for all ballot styles, including both paper ballots and the
balloting screens on electronic voting machines. Look for confusing designs such as those seen
on the "butterfly ballot" in Florida in 2000 and in the
"double bubble debacle" in Los Angeles,
California in February 2008. Do all of the candidates appear on the same side of the same page? Are the
elements of the page properly aligned? Ask to see the pollworker training materials and verify that they
make it clear that voters must vote on the proper device for their precinct. Additional resources regarding
ballot design are available here.
Find out whether poll sites are being changed from past elections. If so, look for a pattern in
these changes. Polling sites in places of worship disenfranchise voters who do not feel comfortable
entering. Combining polling places can result in distances too far for some voters to travel. Object
to such changes.
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Check to see if sufficient paper ballots will be provided. If paper ballots are used for
voting (including emergency paper ballots to be used in case electronic machines fail), find out the
county's policy regarding number of ballots provided to each precinct. The number should be a percentage
of the number of registered voters who have not requested absentee ballots, and this percentage should be
consistent throughout the jurisdiction(s). Check your state elections code to see if there are specific guidelines for number of
ballots to be provided.
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Assess electronic voting machine allocation for equality. If electronic voting machines are
used, find out how many machines are scheduled to be provided in each polling place. Check to see that the
number of machines provided is both proportionate to the number of voters (precincts with more voters should
have proportionally more machines) and is sufficient. The number of machines needed will depend on several
factors including number of voters in a precinct, percentage of voters who vote by mail or during early voting,
and number of contests on the ballot. Unfortunately, no uniform standards exist for determining the number of
voting machines needed. Over 250 voters per machine is definitely too many; 150 registered voters per machine
should be enough machines to allow all voters to cast ballots even when election turnout is high.
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Educate voters to vote in person and on paper if possible. Undertake education campaigns
in your region to educate voters. Make sure your Get Out the Vote efforts emphasize the importance on
voting in person and on paper whenever possible.
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Educate elections officials regarding voting machine vendor overreach. Your local officials
have the legal authority and responsibility to oversee products and services provided by vendors. Encourage
them to read "Vendors are Undermining
the Structure of U.S. Elections" Pages 50-52 detail specific actions election officials can take in
2008 and beyond to protect the elections from vendor undermining. Page 53 has suggestions for citizen
oversight.
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Sign up to serve as pollworkers. Pollworkers can receive extra training in monitoring for
election integrity by signing up with Pollworkers For Democracy.
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Encourage all voters to make sure they are still registered to vote. Voters cannot legally
be removed from the voting rolls within 90 days of an election. We encourage all voters to check now and
check again right before the deadline for registration. Voter registration deadlines are
listed here.
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Organize or participate in community election monitoring efforts before, during and after the
election. Monitors can increase the transparency and accuracy of elections by observing such
procedures as logic and accuracy testing of voting machines, processing of absentee ballots, chain
of custody of election materials, and vote tabulation.
More info.
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Join or request assistance from a local election integrity group. A list of local election
integrity groups that may be available to help with the above tasks can be found at
Election Defense Alliance.
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