Dede Farrell, one of our Vote In Sunshine Coalition team members poses by the "hand count" total of our exit poll conducted yesterday at the Iowa Straw Poll. 897 individuals signed affadavits and/or a vote verification card which looks like this: 
Vote In Sunshine coalition volunteers were all dressed in VoteInSunshine.com t-shirts - some of which were plastered with buttons and stickers from all of the campaigns. We were received very positively by the vast majority of individuals attending the straw poll as well as many of the volunteers working for the various campaigns. There was a bit of concern from some individuals who had read the press or listened to the WHO interview with Bob Schulz and Jim Condit about the lawsuit, but when we described what our main goal was - ie. achieving fair and accurate voting processes in America by returning to the use of and counting/saving/storing of paper ballots -
most of these individuals came around in a positive way to support our effort with words of encouragement. Here's a picture of one of the t-shirts were wore in the sweltering 90-95+ degree heat yesterday:
Here's the listing - as it appeared on our real - ie. hand written - yellow paper list of our manual exit poll paper vote count from yesterday:
Ron Paul 332
Tom Tancredo 150
Mikw Huckabee 187
Fred Thompson 8
Tommy Thompson 39
Mitt Romney 90
Duncan Hunter 12
Hillary Clinton 1
John McCain 5
Sam Brownback 62
John Cox 4
Dennis Kucinich 1
Rudy Giuliani 6
Total 897
Clicking Votes 15,000
Editor's Note: "Clicking Votes" refers to our manual effort to observe throughout the day the number of individuals exiting from the three voting stations in the Hilton Coliseum, Sheman and Stephen centers/halls. Vote In Sunshine volunteers possessed hand counters - ie. "clickers" as we called them - and clicked the counter once for every individual exiting. According to the today's Des Moines Register - page 1 - 14,302 individuals voted in yesterday's straw poll which was just 698 votes shy of our manual estimate. The 897 votes we counted/verified amounted to exactly 6 % of the total votes cast in the Iowa Straw Poll
We will be soon be posting a video of how we voted in the sunshine while we were gathered in gardens of Smith Park right across the street from the Hilton Coliseum in Ames Iowa.
14 comments:
Sunshine:
Would you post the numbers or percentages of workers from each campaign that particpated with this exit poll.
I talked with 3 campaign support crew at the Ames Straw Poll that said they LIKED exit poll idea and wanted to help and REALLY wanted the results to show a COMPUTER free paper result. Also they said they would stand and be counted if that is what it took to prove an honest count.
Stand and be counted is what people said they WANT to do as the results of the computerized Straw Poll result hold no confindence to them.
I agree.
Romeny's Mary has proved nothing to Americans and certainly not Iowans. She is as clean as Ms Harris from Florida from the 2004 elections.
This is Emily here... who was in charge of the clickers.
There were 4 exits, and so 4 separate clickers. At the end of the night, the clicks totaled 12,950. However, at one of the exits, cops showed up and we lost a lot of clicks.
I myself estimated that 1500 voters were missed, making the total about 14,450. I was absolutely sure that there were no more than 15,000 votes.
So my estimate was pretty darn close.
thanks emily....we got this "final" clicker tally from Walter. I was not at our main headquarters/tent when they consolidated this ticker tally, but I will do my best to combine your feedback with what was reported. I think Walter "guesstimated" what we missed during that period - but he may have overshot to get to 15K
Cassity:
The majority of volunteers supported Ron Paul. We had less than 3-4 weeks to put this together and made attempts to reach out to the other campaigns. To be honest we got ZERO help or support from the Ron Paul campaign. In fact we have people inside of the campaign as well as volunteers who worked for the campaign who told us - point blank - that Ron Paul's campaign staff told them NOT to support the Vote In Sunshine effort in any way, shape or form.
As a result of this suppression by the Ron Paul campaign staffers the majority of our volunteers came from outside of Iowa.
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It's our hope that more people from all the campaigns can get involved in this effort. The integrity of our efforts and results would get a big boost. We're just taking baby steps here and are very humbled and thankful for the opportunity to be called to somehow make a difference by shedding light on the importance of securing and manually counting paper ballots in the sunshine!
Thanks for your comments!
"In fact we have people inside of the campaign as well as volunteers who worked for the campaign who told us - point blank - that Ron Paul's campaign staff told them NOT to support the Vote In Sunshine effort in any way, shape or form."
That really makes me mad to hear this. What is the RP campaign thinking? They need to be a little less naive in my opinion.
Thank you for this exit poll and I am sorry I didn't see this sooner to link it on my blog.
We need to have exit polls at all of these types of events.
I would assume that instruction was given to avoid a conflict of interest charge, saying the number was deliberately skewed.
How would it look any better than having a Romney staffer doing the real count to have Ron Paul staffers/supporters where they could manipulate the exit poll numbers?
The more I think about this, Phil is right. I thought they were telling supporters not to get involved. I didn't realize it was people within the campaign.
It's important that Paul grassroots supporters understand the political realities here. I'm not too smart, but I'll try to shed what little light I can on that.
First, there are really two campaigns going on -- 1. The national campaign, and 2. The grassroots campaign. Don't confuse the two; the grassroots campaign is free to do many things the MSM would jump all over if the national campaign tried them. The national campaign is tied down by lots of legal red tape, courtesy of the very Congress (most of us are fed up with) trying to control elections. In addition, the national campaign must contend with the mine-field of the main stream media. (Of course, donations and coordination with the national campaign are much needed too!)
Now, the Vote in Sunshine effort is noble and necessary, in my opinion, but if the Paul national campaign got directly involved, it could easily look like a conflict of interest and any wrangling by the Paul national campaign over the actual outcome could be used to discredit that campaign.
On the other hand, when ordinary Americans who support Paul, like those in the Vote in Sunshine effort, are concerned enough to run such an effort, they complement what the national campaign is doing, and also raise awareness of potential problems with voting at all levels.
So please understand that the national campaign cannot get involved in everything, and are trying to avoid legal and public relations pitfalls. Don't get mad, be happy -- YOU are FREE to support Paul in creative ways that Congress can't control, and that is what freedom is all about!
If you go to the following website and scroll down to his August 1st entry, perhaps what I am talking about will become clearer: http://theronpauladventure.wordpress.com/
Finally, regardless of poll outcomes, people who support Ron Paul should be putting 90% of their effort into getting people registered and committed (drive them there if you have to) to voting Ron Paul in the Republican PRIMARY in their state. That is where the REAL vote for the candidate you want happens. As it stands, a very low percentage (about 7-11%?) of registered voters vote in primaries. Just think what a relatively small number of committed people in each state could do. The Republican party could be forced to have to accept Paul, because of the small army that got to the primaries for him. And heaven knows, the other candidates don't offer anything but the status quo, and more of it.
That’s my take.
Promote Ron Paul DVD - download the DVD files at:
http://infreedomscause.com/election2008/rp08_promo_dvd.php
Burn them to DVD and show it to everyone!
I am a Paul supporter, but you have to understand that those most motivated to sign such an affidavit as those who support him, so I don't think it's a accurate "slice" of the vote.
That said, I do prefer a manual vote and think it's near horrific that we have private corporations counting our vote in secret.
Can you detail the process you went through to get people to fill out the paperwork for the exit poll? Were your volunteers randomly selecting people to ask to fill it out, or did they ask every fifth person, etc.? I ask because if it was "random", and most of the volunteers were RP supporters, they could be more likely to spot someone in a Ron Paul t-shirt and ask them to fill out the paperwork. On top of that, I gotta believe that the Ron Paul supporters would have been much more likely to do so.
I find it incredibly funny how people attack this form of counting.
Has it ever occurred to any of you that the main stream media does it exactly the same way?
They call 1,000 lan lines, or just poll people in the office and post up some stupid "Factual" percentages based on their poll of 1,000 people. From that you get outrageous numbers for candidates.
So before you go slamming that this isn't statistical, I would easily say the something for every poll the main stream media has taken.
Chew on that.
Compare your results with Diebold's "official results."
This is really disgusting if true. How do we get this out into the MSM?
http://ronpaulblogging.blogspot.com/
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