Election Incident Reporting System Up & Running

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, the Verified Voting Foundation, and the Election Protection Coalition (of 60+ member organizations, representing a combined membership of over three million Americans) want to get the word out about our free web-based election incident tracking tool called the Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS). The Project brings the experience of voting rights groups together with the technical groups. It's live now and past election day.

Calls from the public and volunteers to the toll-free hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) are answered or dispatched, if needed, to trained attorneys and technologists organized through TechWatch to respond rapidly to help voters to vote and have their votes counted as intended. The system also enables journalists to be put in touch with real voters who have real problems.

EIRS data is available from now to beyond Election Day, for scholars, policymakers, the press, and the public for documentation of the election that may be useful for post-election litigation, post-election legislation, and/or just the curiosity of people interested in the election process.

EIRS also offers easy automated resources for finding polling place locations, through the 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1 866-687-8683) hotline and http://www.mypollingplace.com/. More than a third of Florida primary election hotline calls were for this basic information, that enabled citizens to vote.

EIRS also has a brand new "do-it-yourself" form as an alternative for people reporting an election irregularity who do not want to talk with operators at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (+1 866 686-8683), or prefer the 24/7 convenience of the web form, from anywhere in the world. Although these web reports may not come to the attention of anyone in time to help in this election, they will be included in our total documentation for the 2004 Elections. Please help us test the form now. Answer "test" to the first question, and then give it a whirl.

In addition, Verified Voting Foundation developed the Verifier, a web-based tool that provides drill-down maps permitting voters to find the voting technology used where they vote, as well as contact information for election officials, absentee and early voting availability, and much more. Some of this information, previously only available commercially, came courtesy of Electionline.org, while the rest resulted from the efforts of dozens of volunteers. VVF welcomes input on missing and incorrect information and will soon offer a free download capability for all the public data contained in the maps.

Verified Voting Foundation (VVF) also offers guides to assist voters in casting votes successfully when they face new voting technologies at the polls. VVF's Voters' Guide to Electronic Voting provides voters with easy-to-read information about the voting machines used in their local polling places and pointers about how to prevent voting technology problems and vote successfully. There's also an urgent warning to voters using touch screen/DRE voting machines.

"We've pulled together in one convenient place a bunch of information that was theoretically available to voters, but really hard to come by," said VVF Executive Director Will Doherty.

"We're doing what we can to let the public know about the problems with and alternatives to paperless e-voting," commented VVF Nationwide Coordinator Pamela Smith.

Once again, for reporting any election irregularity, you can use the toll-free hotline now at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1 866-687-8683). Use http://www.voteprotect.org/index.php?display=EIRMapNation to find and follow the reports.

We hope you will help us spread the word about this free service to prevent election problems from disenfranchising voters or changing election outcomes inappropriately.