I observed the Republican's Coralville, Iowa "super" caucus (all six precincts in one location) and was able to document the entire process from vote casting to counting and calling the centralized phone bank with video and a standard digital camera. The photos can be found here: iowa.facebook.com... and the video will be up YouTube once it's been transferred off the camcorder.
These are the votes that I was able to record as they were counted:
Coralville 01:
Giuliani - 3
Huckabee - 10
Hunter - 0
Keyes - 1
McCain - 7
Paul - 12
Romney - 13
Thompson - 1
Undecided - 0
Coralville 02:
Giuliani - 6
Huckabee - 61
Hunter - 1
Keyes - 1
McCain - 22
Paul - 20
Romney - 27
Thompson - 7
Undecided - 1
Coralville 03:
Giuliani - 0
Huckabee - 4
Hunter - 0
Keyes - 0
McCain - 1
Paul - 3
Romney - 9
Thompson - 5
Undecided - 0
Coralville 04:
Giuliani - 2
Huckabee - 18
Hunter - 0
Keyes - 0
McCain - 3
Paul - 16
Romney - 23
Thompson - 9
Undecided - 0
Coralville 05:
Giuliani - 6
Huckabee - 22
Hunter - 0
Keyes - 0
McCain - 14
Paul - 7
Romney - 58
Thompson - 4
Undecided - 0
Coralville 06:
Giuliani - 15
Huckabee - 67
Hunter - 1
Keyes - 0
McCain - 54
Paul - 19
Romney - 92
Thompson -13
Undecided - 0
The Coralville location was where all ballots and tally sheets for Johnson County congregated at the end of the evening. I was able to get the photo of one other precinct in Iowa City, IA, but they were starting to get suspicious of me (something about asking questions like "Why are you using an old amazon.com box to cast ballots?" and "Why don't you have a standardized counting procedure for all six precincts since they are all in the same room?") and would not let me see additional Reporting Sheets.
Iowa City 01:
Giuliani - 2
Huckabee - 15
Hunter - 0
McCain - 11
Paul - 26
Romney - 18
Thompson -6
(Note: when I photographed this reporting sheet, I was told that Paul won at least one other precinct in Iowa City, but was given no numbers to back that up)
I stuck around well after the press had left trying to get the county chair to tell me a time when precinct level results would be available and if I could take quick snapshots of the other tally sheets now since they were all here and easily available (piled on a table in the corner). At first they were very nice and saying "We'll see what we can do for you, but not right now, let's wait a bit." but around the time that the last few precincts were dropped off in Coralville, the county chair went away somewhere and then came back, then was very irritable at me, said that they (the various county officials) needed to take care of some "bureaucratic paperwork" alone and kicked me out.
A few quick issues with how the six precincts held their caucuses:
- There was no official posting of results at the caucus location: the bulletin board was "missing"
- Ballots were on common, colored (by precinct) cardstock paper with no markings or other method to verify that any given ballot was legitimate. When precincts ran out of ballots, colors from other precincts (with the correct precinct number written on it) or other non-standard papers were used.
- The ballot boxes were used cardboard boxes passed through the room "collection plate" style. It would have been easy to add or remove ballots as it moved through the crowd. (In fact, one of the vote tabulators mentioned that he could not find his own hand-written ballot, which was quite noticeable, since there were only 22 votes cast in that precinct)
- Additional votes were accepted after the polls had closed and counting had been completed (but not yet called in) on very non-standard ballots (grocery store receipts)
- There was no validation at the time of counting to assure that the number of votes cast matched the number of caucus goers that signed in.
- There was no standardized method to count and verify the count of the votes. Only one person per precinct was responsible for counting the votes (although often candidates' observers helped with the count).
We have GOT to do something about these damn wretched voting machines, states that don't put security measures into place, and have some form of cross verification.
I was totally floored when I saw this other video. It is a touch long, but OH, SO WORTH THE WAIT. I will not spoil it for you.
www.youtube.com...
Edit to add: Also, there has apparently been an emergency injunction filed in NH, according to further posts on that page at BlackBox.
Bev is going nuts right about now.
Edit to add again:
Another thing I don't understand is how is RP winning nationally at the straw polls and only showing 8-10%?
www.usastrawpolls.com...
That has him in the lead at 26! So why aren't these numbers translating?
Edit to add:
Apparently a lawsuit has been filed:
January 4th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
LIKELY VOTE COUNT FRAUD IN IOWA REPUBLICAN CAUCUS UNDER INVESTIGATION.
Former FBI Division Chief, Ted Gunderson sent a private investigator to Iowa for the republican caucus.
This investigator discovered suspicious VOTE COUNT activity that may prove that Dr. Ron Paul and his supporters are victims of fraud. The investigation is continuing and a full report is forthcoming.
That is from:
Ron Paul Class lawsuit Former FBI IOWA Fraud
www.bbvforums.org
(visit the link for the full news article)
[edit on 9-1-2008 by TrueAmerican]
