Audit Black Box Voting in Chicago

Who:  Chicago volunteers are seeking help to fund litigation 

What: We need money to fund a suit over possible violations of Illinois election law and a constitutional right to have your March 15, 2016, primary vote counted without being corrupted, stolen or disregarded by "black box" vote machines.  The money raised is bieing used for attorney fees, costs, legal research, legal filing fees, expert witness fees and costs and any other costs of the litigation. 

We have retained an excellent attorney. We are required to cover the costs, which may be extensive. This includes depositions, expert witnesses and we may need audit, computer and forensic experts.

This represents a very rare opportunity to prove something many of us have suspected for some time: that an audit or hand-count of actual ballots cast by voters will reveal that the real votes are vastly different from the "black box" voting machine tabulations on election night. We have seen this already in the Chicago Board of Elections (CBOE) audit done after the primary: they could not get the hand-counted ballot totals to match the machine-counted totals.

A similar lawsuit in Germany lead to the ban on using any computers to count the vote because the court agreed that the process could not be done in a reliable fashion with sufficient checks on the machines.

When: We need some money very soon as deadlines for filing are rapidly approaching. Even after filing, we will need to fund the expenses discussed above.

What we are we doing:

Chicago has a well-deserved reputation for stealing elections that goes back before anyone reading this was born.  And many of us opposed to "black box" voting machines know that they have been used to steal elections other than just Ohio for Bush in 2004.

In the rest of the world and especially third world countries, when exit polls don't match "actual results," everyone agrees that this is due to vote fraud and is evidence of a stolen election. In the U.S., the media chalks it up to the exit polls being just "wrong" and the polls are "smoothed over" with "actual results" spit out by unverifiable, black box vote counting machines.

In Chicago, a group of 20 volunteers from Who's Counting Chicago lead by Dr. Lora Chamberlain, monitored the recent 5% audit/recount of Chicago's Board of Elections (CBOE) vote mandated by the State Board of Elections. The audit is done as a test or check that the electronic, scan machines are counting the vote correctly. It represents a rare opportunity to see the actual, physical ballots voters marked on primary day. as the ballots were hand counted. The CBOE was required to count these ballots using a method other than the scan machines used on election day or in early voting.

But election officials refused to recognize any discrepancies -- of which we documented many -- between the hand counted numbers and the previous "machine" numbers and always reverted to the machine numbers. Some audit. One table repeatedly found the same discrepancy and was made to re-count the ballots 5 times! Also, the CBOE deliberately made it dificult for us to monitor the count.

This litigation and audit represents one of the few opportunities to audit the actual vote and ballots cast and compare them to what the "block box" voting machines say the vote was. This is extremely rare. We need help to make this happen. If we can prove these machines can't reliably count the votes, we can potentially see real change in how Chicago, and maybe even the United States, votes.

This litigation may also set some "ground rules" for how future audits are conducted during every election that election protection volunteers will have proper access to the count. We need your help.

 To be even more specific about the use of the funds: They will not be used by me for any personal reason. I intend to disburse the money for the following purposes: 

1. Legal filing fees; 


2. Costs associated with litigation like subpoena fees and witness fees, court reporters, deposition costs;
 

3. Legal fees for attorneys to research the issues involved, draft a legal complaint that can withstand motions to dismiss. 

4. Expert fees for software engineers, electronic voting experts, statistical experts and others who can help make our case more effective. 

5. Any other costs, fees, or expenses involved in the litigation and pursuit of this matter which I can't foresee at this time.