Announcing a new event for Americans for Verifiable Elections!

What: Texas Straw Poll

When: Friday, August 31, 7:00 PM

Where: (A location for this event hasn't been chosen yet)

Event Description: CALLING ALL VOTERESCUE/VOTE-IN-SUNSHINE VOLUNTEERS! TEXAS NEEDS YOU!

Texans for Real Elections, which includes VoteRescue, Independent Texans, Project for the New American Citizen, and the Texas Motorcycle Riders Association (among others), in conjunction with Vote In Sunshine will be monitoring the Texas Straw Poll on Friday, August 31st and Saturday, September 1st in Fort Worth, at the Fort Worth Convention Center, and YOUR HELP IS NEEDED! CAN YOU COME TO TEXAS AND REPEAT the EXCELLENT job you did in Ames, Iowa? We hope so! We will give you a BIG Texas welcome!

Volunteers are needed as videographers, and for one or more of the following: conducting a simple exit poll; gathering signatures for a petition; distribution literature, counting voters coming out of the Fort Worth Convention Center, and other possibilities.

We have learned that paper ballots will be used in this Straw Poll election, and we are confirming the counting method. We assume it will be optical scan counters, in which case, massive monitoring efforts will be needed.

If you can be in Fort Worth Friday and Saturday, August 31st and September 1st, please contact:

Karen Renick
512/496-7408
karen@voterescue.org

Learn more here:
http://electionreform.meetup.com/165/calendar/6214495/

Dark Cloud Descends Over "Unofficial" Iowa Straw Poll As Ron Paul Take 1st in NH & AL and 3rd In IL

Where’s the Corporate Media on These Two (New Hampshire and Alabama)? And let's not forget Ron Paul's recent (8/16) 3rd place finish at the Illinois Straw Poll - see this link.

Editor's Note: The Iowa GOP and Iowa State & County election auditor's office have yet to count all the paper ballots in the 2007 Iowa Straw Poll. Where are the ballots? Why are the paper ballots being kept away from We The People? Why do these officials refuse to count the paper ballots from the 2007 Iowa Straw Poll in the sunshine before We The People with the cameras rolling?

Interesting Comment

This came in as a comment on one of our videos uploaded to YouTube.com:

evoldfield (1 day ago)

The FEC shows that Ron Paul received more donations from residents of Iowa than Huckabee, Tancredo, and Brownback.

Diebold on the Run?

On August 17th, 2007 Schvenzlerman over on DailyPaul reported:

I'm ripping off the following news from someone else:

New evidence revealed in Dan Rather Reports' "The Trouble with Touch Screens" raises serious questions as to whether US voting systems companies have committed commercial fraud in jurisdictions across the country. Visit http://voteraction.org to see the video and sign a petition to ask Congress to start an investigation. The American people need to know, to the fullest extent, how this private influence and control has compromised our democracy

Nice Plug From DailyPaul.com

Vote in Sunshine / Americans for Verifiable Elections

Posted August 16th, 2007 by Schvenzlerman

This group(s) is geared toward 1) exposing the fraud of using computer voting machines (unreliable and hackable) and forcing legal action to 2) remove the machines and/or 3) require use of paper ballots that will be counted in public under video. Their work is very worthy and these people should be considered patriots.

See these two sites: http://www.voteinsunshine.blogspot.com.... and http://electionreform.meetup.com/165.
...

Read more here.

Editor's Note: Thanks very much Daily Paul! We'll try to get the bottom of this "screaming" behavior you wrote about. Some of us have been known to scream/chant for our favorite Presidential candidate. One in particular did raise his voice when the Iowa Straw Poll security guards attempted to remove him from a polling room - see below.
All in all we are a pretty diverse, if passionate bunch of individuals that come from all over the country who simply seek a return to the use paper ballots that can be counted in the open sunshine in view of We The People.

PS. We The People Foundation and other plaintiffs - some of whom are with the Vote In Sunshine coalition - were behind the lawsuit that was filed in Federal Court in Des Moines last week. Funding and support for Vote In Sunshine and Americans For Verifiable Elections is being run through Network America which is part of Citizens For A Fair Vote Count. You can make a one-time donation to this cause at this link.

Iowa Straw Poll Voting Machine & Process Demonstration

As posted before on this site:

"Two members of the group, Americans For Verifiable Elections - which is part of the Vote In Sunshine coalition - were asked to leave the demonstration of the Iowa Straw Poll voting process which included a review of the Diebold machines in question. They were asked to leave after they asked the basic question about whether the paper ballots were going to be counted."

John Birch Society Blatently Misleads or Lies About Our Vote In Sunshine Exit Poll

The John Birch Society just published an article, "Final Observations on Ron Paul and the Iowa Straw Poll" which attempts to divert attention away the issue of vote fraud in Ames while either misleading our lying about our Vote In Sunshine effort as follows:

By Brian Farmer
Published: 2007-08-16 21:40

"Ron Paul's fifth place finish in the Iowa Straw Poll is being called into question by some of his supporters, as voting machine failures and fuzzy figures raise suspicions of vote fraud. But potential vote fraud wasn't the only matter that was worthy of concern at this year's event in Ames."

Brian was either 1) misled, 2) didn't check his facts or 3) deliberately lied when he wrote:

"It’s claimed that some exit polls even showed that Ron Paul had won. However, sources who attended the Iowa Straw Poll said that the Ron Paul exit pollers were obvious supporters of the Ron Paul campaign, hence, supporters of other campaigns might not have spoken to them, and might have even avoided them."

The Vote In Sunshine Coalition would like to ask Brian:

1) Who were your "sources"? Did you call them to confirm this?

2) What specific evidence to you have that the Vote In Sunshine volunteers identified themselves as "Ron Paul exit pollers" to individuals exiting the polls in Ames Iowa Straw poll voting rooms?

3) If Vote In Sunshine volunteers were "obvious supporters of Ron Paul" and "supporters of other campaigns might not have spoken to them...and might have even avoided them" then how do you account for the fact that the majority of the votes (63%) we confirmed in our exit poll came from individuals who voted for the other candidates? That is, 565 out of 897 (63%) votes as follows:

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

You can read more about how we counted our votes in this exit poll - which we have never claimed is "scientific" - at this link.

Read more here.

Editor's Note: We have never claimed that our exit poll was/is in any way "scientific", but if we had 200-300 volunteers on the ground in Ames we could have had a fighting chance to obtain 4000-5000 affidavits and/or vote verification cards.