Voters Hold Parallel Elections to Ensure the Accuracy of the Vote

Summary

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During a meeting scheduled with the Department of Justice Voting Rights Department on August 3, at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center (AARLCC) in Fort Lauderdale, voters were asked to relay their experiences with voting. Ellen Brodsky ran the "Grass Roots Parallel Election Project" during the local elections in March 2005. She's a member of Broward Verified Voting, a community effort to have voting machines give paper validation of a voter's intent.

"Do you want the machines to do the voting or do you want to do the voting? That's the idea behind the parallel elections. Also, we are concerned with the software used in the ivotronic machines. How do we know what it's doing or is capable of? Are the voting machines accurately recording the votes according to the voter's intent? We are only told whether an election ran smoothly or not according to election officials, which is mirrored in the media coverage," she said.

"More than 67 percent of the voters in our study had absolutely no confidence or evidence that their votes were being accurately recorded according to their intent and welcomed the idea of doing their own testing. They drew the line in the sand and said this is the people's election, from now on no more 'faith-based voting,' and took it upon themselves to exercise their patriotic duty by checking the accuracy of their voting machines," she said. So began the birth of the first ever "Grass Roots" Parallel Election Project!

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Voters Hold Parallel Elections to Ensure the Accuracy of the Vote

People take their future into their own hands when they use the ballot. On the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Florida is still at the center of voting controversy, especially where the touch screen voting machines are concerned. Most want to know if their vote is being accur...

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