Eloriel..here's an account of questionable poll watching [View All]

I'm reposting this as it dropped quite fast.

Pollwatching at Election Central
by Roxanne Jekot

I was badged as a NAACP Pollwatcher as was another member of our team. We arrived at the Election Supervisor's office at 9:00 AM and asked to observe the operation throughout the day. The employees were disconcerted by the request and we were asked to repeat it several times. 20 minutes later, the Elections Supervisor explained to us that we would not be granted access because the center was "too small and there just isn't room for you." Our response was that we would do anything necessary to stay out of the way and make ourselves unobtrusive. We also offered to have only one observer in the room at a time, trading off throughout the day. The Elections Supervisor refused every alternative and offered us a 10 minute tour, but we would have to leave.

We left the office to avoid a confrontation and went to the parking lot to contact the NAACP and our attorneys. They negotiated with the Elections Supervisor for more than 4 hours in an attempt to get access for us and were unsuccessful.

As we sat in the parking lot, we observed teams of 2 technicians taking voting machines out of the building and putting them in a car. We spoke to the technicians asking them to identify themselves (they worked for Diebold) and if they were replacing DREs at polling places. They replied that they were. During the 4 hours we were there, we saw 10 DREs moved from the building to the automobiles. It appeared they were breaking down the DREs used for early voting and using them as replacement machines. The early voting machines were in a windowed room close to where we were sitting in the parking lot.

The end result of the negotations with the attorneys was that we would not be granted access until the polls closed at 7:00 PM so we returned to our HQ location.

(more odd stuff happening)
<http://www.countthevote.org/gems_watch.htm>