Do you wonder whether your vote counts? Are you losing faith in our electoral process? Do you think our elections are as accurate as they should be? Are you concerned that the results might be vulnerable to fraud or machine failure?

Don’t just worry – take action!

Things you can do today to improve our electoral process:

1. Join the Election Transparency Project today! Sign up right now for Verified Voting's non-partisan citizen observation program, the Election Transparency Project!

2. Print the Election Transparency questionnaires! Download the Election Transparency Questionnaires (in PDF format) from our website. Read them and consider what you know or can find out. Decide which questionnaires interest you or your group the most. If you register for the project, you'll automatically receive information on how to access online webforms you can fill in for the questionnaires that you choose to complete.

3. Register to vote, and vote on Election Day! Concerned that your vote won't count? If you don't vote, then it definitely won't. Get out there and cast your ballot!

4. Submit the information from your completed questionnaires!

You can make a difference this November!

When you register for the Election Transparency Project, you’ll be participating in the first phase of a multi-year, nationwide program of targeted election observation. Our goal is to uncover and document election problems, and make recommendations for improving future elections.

Verified Voting will provide Election Transparency volunteers with guidelines and questionnaires for observing and reporting on various parts of the electoral process – you choose which portions interest you most. Once you’ve collected the information, we’ll provide you with an online web-based form where you can easily add your observations and notes to those gathered by other observers all over the country.

Verified Voting will make publish the Election Transparency data after removing all sensitive/personal information. We will analyze the data and make appropriate recommendations to improve the transparency and accuracy of future elections.

For more information on the importance of transparency, read "Making Democracy Transparent", written by Stanford computer science professor Dr. David Dill, who is also Verified Voting's founder.

Participate NOW!

This election season, we will focus on components of the election process that occur before Election Day, as well as on and after Election Day. That means some observation will take place in October, so sign up now!

We provide six questionnaires to guide you in collecting crucial information:

1. Election Transparency Scorecard to help you grade your state and county’s level of openness and transparency;

2. Pre-election (Logic & Accuracy) Testing questionnaire to help you document local testing of voting equipment prior to the election;

3. Early Voting questionnaire helps you document early voting ballot accounting for locations that offer early voting. This ballot accounting compares the number of people who sign in to vote at an early voting site versus the number of votes cast.

4. Poll Closing questionnaire to document ballot accounting when the polls close on Election Day;

5. Auditing questionnaire helps document how manual audits are conducted in states that require a voter-verified paper record (VVPR) and manual auditing; and

6. Disability Access questionnaire to assess the level of access to the electoral process for persons with disabilities.

Actual observation typically takes only a few hours of your time, and depends on what you are observing. Some observation opportunities taking place during the business day, others are in the evening; some on Election Day and others before or after Election Day. During your observations, you can take notes (on the questionnaire you printed out beforehand) and then later go to Verified Voting's online web-based forms and submit your data.

When you sign up for the Election Transparency Project you'll receive project updates and the web page addresses of the online forms you'll need in order to submit your questionnaire results.

For more information on how to choose the type of observation that fits your personal interests and schedule best, as well as other useful instructions, please refer to the Election Transparency Questionnaire page.

Other Organizations and Resources

Verified Voting supports and applauds other efforts for citizen participation in elections, including the ongoing work of the Election Protection Coalition and the newly launched Pollworkers For Democracy program. The Verified Voting Election Transparency Project is designed to complement, rather than duplicate, these projects.

To read more about the Election Transparency Project, you may also be interested in this article from one of our recent newsletters. http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6386