Become a pollwatcher sign up now or call Amanda Bowers at 301-270-6150. 

Between now and Election Day, November 2, 2004, TrueVoteMD plans to recruit enough pollwatchers to make sure that there is a TrueVoteMD presence for many of the nearly 1800 polling stations statewide. Pollwatchers will play one of two roles:  

Outside Pollwatchers: Two TrueVoters will be stationed outside each precinct to hand out information on electronic voting problems that occur specifically with the Diebold machines (such as refusing to record the votes, incomplete ballots, or machine crashes). Outside pollwatchers will also take "Incident Reports" from any voter who has a problem so that incidents are recorded and forwarded to the TrueVote Legal Committee and the media if necessary. 

Inside Pollwatchers: These folks will be inside observing what is happening—do the machines turn on in the morning or do voters get turned away, how do election officials handle it when a machine refuses to record a vote, etc. If you have computer skills, you are most useful as an Inside Pollwatchers.

All the errors mentioned above actually occurred in the Maryland March Primary, contrary to the State Board of Elections claims the system ran flawlessly. On November 2 we want a statewide citizen effort to record problems and take all necessary action to make sure every vote is counted. Pollwatchers will make reports throughout the day to our technical and legal committees if they observe any problems.

TrueVoteMD will conduct training sessions in your community over the next two months to familiarize pollwatchers with all the information needed for election day, including:

• MD State rules for pollwatcher behavior, rights and responsibilities
  
• Typical problems voters have at polling precincts
  
• Legal requirements for opening the polls, conducting the election, reporting results, and closing the polls
  
• Guidelines on observing DRE's
  
• Pertinent laws to counter any invalid challenges by poll judges
  
• Information about the structure and operation of DREs
  

This pollwatching effort is intended as a public service.  We want to support our hardworking local election officials and improve election accuracy by collecting information about problems voters experience with the system.

Pollwatching is even more fun if you do it with friends. Ask them to join you and do their part for this November's election.