BECOME AN INVESTIGATOR

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Citizens for a Fair Vote Count Action Program
for Citizen Investigators in Each County of the USA --- Step 1

This is the First Step of Action for citizen investigator in each county. More Steps will follow for an eventual Action Manual.

After you have attained the answers to some or all of these questions, keep a copy for yourself and send a copy of the answers to us at Citizens for a Fair Vote Count, PO Box 11339, Cincinnati, Ohio 45211. You can also e-mail you answers to action@votefraud.org -- Be sure to include a note with your name, phone number, and what county the answers apply to, i.e., Hamilton County, Ohio. Then we will post the answers up on our internet site Network America (www.networkamerica.org) by county and state, so that anyone in the nation can check to see what the conditions and voting methods are in his or her (or any) county, as well as the state of the fight to restore honest and verifiable elections. The initial effect of this questionnaire will be to demonstrate the pattern of secret ballot counts, devoid of citizen checks and balances, which are happening across the country.

List of Questions to ask Your County Election Officials

(The answer to these questions are, in every case, public information. Be polite, but do not let any public official intimidate you or make you feel like you are asking for inappropriate information. However, be prepared for the possibility that you will encounter public officials who have been trained to play the part of a stern school teacher, and to treat you like an impertinent child asking improper questions.)

1) What kind of a ballot does our county use in the precincts, if any?

2) What is the method of voting used in this county? How does it work?  What does the citizen do when he casts his votes? (If you already vote in the county, ask them to confirm that you understand the process fully.)

3) Who makes the machines or computers or system used? In other words, who is the vendor or vendors who supply the materials which make elections in your county possible?

4) Who – (what is the name of the person who) — programmed the software that is being used to count the votes in this upcoming election?

5) What can we, as citizens, do to monitor the vote count on Election Day? For instance, can we be at each precinct, or how does such citizen monitoring of the ballot count work, if any?

6) What happens to the votes from the time they are cast until they are put into storage? What path do they take? If the ballots are not hand counted by neighborhood citizens at each precinct, what safeguards are taken to ensure that ballots are NOT switched when being transported from one location to the other?

7) (assuming the ballots are not counted by the citizens) Then how does the board of elections count the ballots? By optical scanner? By computer?

8) Are there any modems in any of the computers used to count or tabulate the vote?

9) So what right do candidates and citizens have to monitor the ballot count? Are designated representatives of the parties, or of candidates, allowed to participate in or at least observe a hand count or a hand count “double-check” of the ballots at the neighborhood precinct, before the ballots leave the neighborhood precinct – to make sure the computers are programmed properly? In other words, what right do we as citizens have to check or double check that the computers have been programmed properly, you know, that there were no programming errors?

10) So what checks and balances do you use at the Board of Elections to catch if there is a glitch in the computer program? How do you guard against “Trap Doors”, “Trojan Horses”, and the other methods which can potentially compromise and distort a program? Have any of the Election officials in our county been allowed to see the program? If so, who? Can we as citizens examine the program which instructs the election night computers what to do? If not, why not?

11) How about recounts? What is the procedure to get a recount? How long does it take to get a recount? What is the cost, if any? How many precincts are recounted? What happens to the ballots between election day and when the re-count takes place? Is the recount done by means of a hand count of paper ballots? Or are the ballots just run through the computer for a second time? Are the candidates or citizens allowed to witness the recount?

12)  Who makes the decision on what vote counting system is used in this county? (For instance, usually the county commissioners, or the local Board of Elections Supervisor, make the decision – and it is approved by the Secretary of State to make sure it’s within state laws.)

13)  Is there any state law preventing our county from returning to paper ballots hand counted in public by neighborhood citizens at each neighborhood precinct? (If they say yes, tell them you are interested in the specifics regarding what law or regulation permits, or forbids, such a return to hand count of paper ballots by neighborhood citizens in their own neighborhood precinct – complete with posting of the final results, before the ballots leave the precinct.)

14) How much money does our county pay to the vendor(s) who supply materials our election system in an election year? Which companies are paid? How much is each paid? For what services are each paid? Does our vendor send in an outside computer expert to run our computer on election night? Can we get copies of all the invoices the taxpayers of this county have paid to all vendors involved in our election system, so as to understand for what services we are paying?

(End of Questionnaire)

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