Video The Vote
Founded two years ago by Ian Inaba of Guerrilla News Network, John Ennis of Shoot First, Inc., and James Rucker of ColorOfChange.org, Video the Vote seeks to ensure "timely, complete, and accurate reporting of voter suppression and election irregularities by organizing citizen journalists to document elections and then using their footage to raise awareness about the ongoing challenges facing American voters." More:
Video the Vote operates through a simple three-step process.(Thanks, Melanie Cornwell)1. Volunteers sign up online, giving us their email address, cell phone number, and video proficiency.
2. On election day, voters call in to national hotlines to report problems at the polls, Video the Vote dispatches our volunteers to get the story.We also obtain footage from roving videographers who are documenting the election process in their communities.
3. Volunteers then upload their footage to our web site where it is available for immediate viewing by the media and the public.
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There may be problems doing this in Minnesota; while access to the polling place is granted to journalists to observe, they're not allowed make a record of who votes and who does not. As a former election judge, I would think that videotaping the process would constitute making such a record, and I'd have to ask, then order, people doing such to leave, and call the cops if they didn't. I suspect (but do not know) that the prohibition is because such a record might be used for intimidation either in the polling place or at a later time.
Minnesota Statutes:
Sounds like a recipe for the Cloward-Piven tactic
Thank you so much to the folks who are doing this. I'm going to sign up, but I doubt it will do much good in Oakland.
We hear a lot about the biggest dangers facing our democracy, but this is really it: our democracy itself. There are already incidences of voting machines changing votes.
http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/the-electronic-voting-machine-glitches-begin/
The 2000 and 2004 elections were directly manipulated:
http://www.truthout.org/video/102308A
We can't stand by on this.
Then of course, there are all of those who live in "safe states," whose votes don't count at all.
And not a whisper from Democrats about eliminating the Electoral college.
And all of the points on which the two major parties agree, and over which voters have no say.
Since I live in one of those "safe states," and my vote doesn't count, I will be voting for a third party candidate who actually represents my views.
The rest of you can enjoy choosing between the Smiler and the Beast.
Just FYI, Smartfilter has categorized http://videothevote.org/ as "spam URL" and "Suspicious".
HTOM is correct. Many states have statutes that prohibit making a record of someone's vote. Sometimes these statutes mention video, more often, they do not. Regardless, a video of someone voting would be illegal in many jurisdictions. You should not bring video equipment into a polling place without checking your local laws first.
Most voter intimidation occurs outside the polling place, for the same reasons #1&5 mention, so filming voter intimidation is an awesome idea to try to dissuade this from happening, and document when it does (as has already been reported in early voting this election.) As far as voting machine shenanigans go, the best you can do is double-check your voting choices before you leave the booth to make sure they were registered correctly. Any back-end shenanigans are not going to be visible to the public anyway (which is why paper trails must be established where not in place.) I think this is a great use of non-partisan grass roots action to try to ensure our democracy works as it should.
The practical problem is that you have to record the intimidation without recording the voters, because they might consider your recording of them to be additional intimidation!
This may be a great thing for abuses or irregularities in the voting area/setup/process, but won't help solve any problems with voting machines.
The volunteers may not be available for all voting areas, and if they are, they can't get in to see a voting machine unless they happen to be registered for that area and haven't actually voted yet. Whether the election officials in that area will allow a camera into the booth area is also in doubt.
I think everyone who goes to vote and has a camera phone should make sure to bring it with them and document what happens. Remember that you can only vote once, so make sure you're recording or snapping successive pics as you go through the process!
I think this is a problematic idea for one BIG reason: Videotaping voters has LONG been a tool for vote suppression, and this runs the risk of inadvertently keeping lots of people from voting.
One of the big vote-suppression scams employed nationwide is to spread the false claims that police (or undercover agents) will be at the polling places to serve warrants, to identify people with outstanding traffic tickets, overdue taxes, library fines, whatever.
People who see cameras outside their polling places who have heard these rumors may turn back for fear that the tapes are being made by law enforcement in order to pursue criminal charges.
There is also a long history, particularly in the south, of violence against persons of color who dare to vote. First-time voters of color (and there will be a LOT this year!) may be afraid to be videotaped voting, for fear that they will later be identified on video and targeted for retribution.
None of this is to say we shouldn't be making every effort to identify bad behavior at the polls. But the effort is probably better spent keeping paper records than idly videotaping, especially given the likelihood of unintended effects.
1. The people you want to record are the officials who are denying the right to vote. They are the issue.
2. If the citizen is denied the right to vote he/she should not be considered a voter and therefore is not under the restriction against filming.
If you can't film them they must be voters and therefore can proceed.
If they are being denied they are not voters and therefore open to filming.
Its a safe bet that if voter suppression / intimidation practices are occurring in front of a polling place, people are going to be more afraid of that than cameras. No one is talking about setting up your tripod, lights, a sound boom and a huge camera setup anyway. It is simply that if you see something going wrong, be prepared to pull out your phone / small hand held device and shoot some video.
They are providing a centralized place for such things to be collected and analyzed; to get the word out; and to contact appropriate authorities and / or election officials. Just alerting folks that ordinary citizens might be ready and watching might be enough to dissuade shenanigans from occurring. It seems to me that these are thoughtful precautions to put into place beforehand. What could it hurt?
I seriously doubt that election officials who witness something illegal going on are going to make right for the person taking video of the incident. If they are, then word can easily get out that the officials themselves are corrupt. It would be worth temporarily losing a camera for that to happen. Corrupt election officials have too many ways to affect things behind the scenes to risk such exposure in overtly suppressing voters.
Where I live in New Jersey photography is not allowed within 900 feet of any polling location. Oh well.
In CA you may not photograph or videotape any voters in the polls, or photograph your ballot.
Please, don't make this any more difficult than it's going to be and slow down the voting process with disruptions. We're predicting 70-80 percent turnout, and it's going to be a LONG day.
-- CA pollworker
I'm signed up to be an election judge this cycle also (though still a standby, I'm pretty sure they'll call me given the expected turnout)...please do *not* try to video your vote or anyone else's without talking to the voting judges first. You can video whatever you want outside, but if you want to act as a member of the media inside the polling place we've got procedures for that (and you'll have to be escorted around & there will be limits on what you can & can't video).
You will be asked (in my state anyway) to turn off all cell phones, pagers, iPods, etc before voting anyway. You should never be able to leave a polling place with a record of how you or anyone else voted. The secrecy of the ballot is hugely important. Don't toss that aside.
Can't you just close the curtains of the voting booth and video your own vote, if no one else's?
It might be against the law, but so is election-stealing.
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Kay, I would have no objection to your doing that; in our precinct, though, there are no curtains except around the handicap station (there are privacy screens that keep you from looking at someone else's optical scan ballot while they have it open in front of them.) A camera would be easily able to defeat those screens, so unless you're willing to use the handicap station, sorry. You wouldn't want someone else sneaking a photo of you and your ballot, would you?
I think this is an excellent idea with all of the reports already in about voter suppression techniques and vote machine flipping. I took advantage of the early voting we have in my county and we used touch-screens. I carefully read the instructions to see how I could make sure my vote was properly recorded and was able to touch "Review" and see a paper copy, like a receipt, of all of my choices. I don't know that I would have bothered in times past, but as of late I'm reading so much about what can go wrong-- accidentally or purposefully-- and wanted to be as careful as I could be. What struck me first (besides the long waits in multiple lines) was that we had to show ids to vote-- when I first heard someone say that that was a strategic form of partisan disenfranchisement, I didn't get it, but then I learned that the people who disproportionately don't have ids are people of color, who overwhelmingly tend to vote democratic. Then I noticed the brand of voting machine I was using was Sequoia and remembered reading this report:
"To comply with a federal court order [HAVA], Nassau County purchases ballot-marking devices from Sequoia Voting Systems. Of the first 240 devices delivered, 85% are too defective to be usable, placing the county in jeopardy of violating the court order."-- VotersUnite, "Vendors are Undermining the Structure of U.S. Elections,"
http://www.issuelab.org/research/vendors_are_undermining_the_structure_of_us_elections
I was also looking around to see if anyone was being given provisional ballots. I figure if I had stuck around long enough, it would happen because if you don't have id you are offered one. They can be thrown out for no apparent reason, and to a degree that can affect the outcome of elections:
"In New Mexico, the number of "provisional ballots," which are mandated under new federal voting rules, that went uncounted exceeded the margin of victory in the presidential race in 2004." -- People for the American Way
http://www.issuelab.org/research/new_face_of_jim_crow_voter_suppression_in_america
Such discarding of provisional ballots would be illegal.
Apparently the rules for counting provisional ballots are very vague and vary state by state, so legal or not, millions are thrown out.
"More than one in three of the nearly 2 million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 election were ultimately rejected. Compared to 2004, fewer provisional ballots were cast and more were counted in the 2006 election, yet problems remained. In 2008, continued high rates might exceed the margin of victory in several highly contested states in the November presidential race, casting uncertainty on the ultimate outcome and increasing the likelihood of post-election litigation."
http://blackboxvoting.com/s9/