Part 1: ELECTION MADNESS IN GA AND ARIZONA, & THE SANITY OF SCANNED PAPER BALLOTS

On GREEGREE zoom #118 we begin with a “How To” session from ANDREA MILLER of the Center for Common Ground and RAY MCCLENDON of the Georgia NAACP.

Ray and Andrea explain how citizens from inside Georgia and around the US can plug into help turn out the vote in the upcoming December 6 US Senate runoff in Georgia.

This historic election will determine whether the US Senate will be 50-50 or 51-49, and will have enormous impacts on the fate of the nation.

JOHN BRAKEY of Audit USA then updates us on the “Lake Effect” in Arizona, in which a MAGA gubernatorial candidate is finally forced to concede defeat.

We also discuss major electoral studies confirming that the fairest and most reliable way to conduct a vote is with hand marked paper ballots that are then scanned.

The scanners provide the initial—very fast—results, which can then be checked with risk limiting audits and, if necessary, actual hand counting.

The election protection movement has fought for this outcome since Ohio 2004. 

With confirmation from the Brennan Center and others, we now have a national “gold standard” for our democratic future.

Brakey tells of the new legislation likely to get bi-partisan approval for precisely this method from the Arizona legislature.

Hopefully this will lead to a national standard that will help further American democracy.

This is a major achievement to be greeted with genuine gratitude and pride. 

Part 2: Diablo, California, and the recent Nuclear madness
 

Introduced by Harvey Wasserman
we are joined by

ANDREA MILLER of the Center for Common Ground ( https://www.centerforcommonground.org/phonebanks ) , &

RAY MCCLENDON of the Georgia NAACP (georgianaacp.org).

Together they explain how you can phone bank, donate and (if you’re in Georgia)

knock on doors and send postcards to help increase turnout.

The runoff ends December 6, so there’s not much time.  

Voter turnout will make all the difference.  So please give a listen!!
Transcript below!

Here’s a lightly edited transcript of our conversation

on the Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Zoom #118:  

HARVEY WASSERMAN:
We are joined by Andrea Miller and Ray McClendon.

The upcoming Georgia runoff is December 6.

It will decide the final seat in the US Senate, whether the Democrats will have 51 or 50.

It is a race between the former football player, Herschel Walker,

and the incumbent US Senator, the Reverend Rafael Warnock.

The runoff has happened because Warnock won the popular vote count, but did not get over 50 percent.

You are probably receiving 6 or 7 fundraising

Emails every hour from various entities, asking you for money.

We are joined by the 2 great people who have really engineered the grassroots campaigning in Georgia.

They are non-partisan.  This is about getting out the vote at the grassroots.

The so-called Georgia miracle of 2021, 

in which 2 US Senators were elected with grassroots campaigning,

has shaped the makeup of the US Senate for the last 2 years….

Ray McClendon and Andrea  Miller are back with us to explain exactly what they think should be done in a nonpartisan way to get out the vote.

Andrea Miller  is the founder and CEO of the Center for Common Ground based in Virginia, which does grassroots organizing all over the country.

She will briefly lay out exactly what’s going to happen there and give us her contacts.

She’ll be followed by Ray McClendon, state political director of the Georgia National Association for Advancement of Colored People.

Andrea, what  are you doing in Georgia to get out the vote?

And how can people help?

ANDREA MILLER:

We provide the IT [Information Technology] Infrastructure.

We have the phone banks. We build the canvas materials, and all of the things that are not on the ground.

We do the texting. We got an early start on phone banking and texting and postcarding.

We started sending out postcard addresses on November the tenth, literally 2 days after the election.

We have distributed over 790,000 addresses to writers around the country to write to Georgia.

We do all of our work as Nonpartisan work. So we work in support of voters.

We have been very, very strategic about our targets.

We are targeting the voters who early voted for the November election, and we got started on texting last week as well.

What was really amazing was all the people who thanked us for the information we had about where to early vote and when was there going to be Sunday voting.

The only reason we had that was we literally had to call the county election officials and get them to tell us all the counties still have not updated their websites.

So we have to ask everybody that is on this call….Ask Number One….

We have got phone banks running into Georgia.

Because we are giving voters information on how to vote and not pitching them a candidate,

 people tend to be a little more willing to listen to our messages.

We provide browser dialing, so that means when people call using our own banks, their phone number is protected.

And very very importantly, we leave messages.

That way even if information is not posted on the county website or the State website about where early voting is.

We actually are providing that information.

It is in our home banks, and we tell voters.

So I will give you a link, and that is where you can go to sign up for our phone banks.

We have nationally guided phone banks.   That’s for people who have never done a bank using our technology before.  

You click on a county where you want to make calls and start calling.

Our phone banks run 9 am to 8 PM eastern time. Every day.  Here is the link:

https://www.centerforcommonground.org/phonebanks

So thank you all for being here. Thank you all for caring so much about Georgia.

Our phone banks are open now.  . We’ve already made over 100,000 calls.

We have more than 500,000 numbers.  These are NOT robo calls.  So people can leave a message.

HARVEY WASSERMAN:

Ray McClendon, you’re talking to us from Atlanta.

Please tell us what you want people to do to help get out the vote what is and what is the date of the upcoming runoff.

RAY MCCLENDON:  

The actual last day to vote is election day. December, sixth, that’s the run off day.

But  we are strongly encouraging every voter to get out and early vote.

Early voting is the way that we built up substantial black and brown folks to get to the polls, progressives to get to the polls.

We did this during during both the 2020 election and the 2022 general election.

So we’re pushing early voting now because of the Georgia’s voter suppression law. 

We went from 9 weeks for a runoff in 2020 that occurred on January fifth of 2021 to only 4 weeks.

So that compressed time frame means that we have an awful lot more work to do.

Because of the holidays we had been in a situation where it appear we were not gonna have any weekend voting that was mandatory.

But some counties were having some Sunday voting.

We were a part of a lawsuit that was filed.  

We’ve been able to get Saturday voting for this coming weekend.

So we are good from Saturday, November 20 through December 6.

….

HARVEY WASSERMAN:   

Andrea and Ray are the real deal.  

Ray has emphasized that face-to-face door-to-door canvassing is best done by local folks.

That can be supported at a cost of about $140/day/canvasser.

We urge all election activists to join and support these grassroots efforts 

to get out the vote in this Georgia runoff.

For out-of-staters, the best routes are through phone banking and donating to support local canvassers.

The Center for Common Ground is at:   centerforcommonground.org and https://www.centerforcommonground.org/phonebanks

The Georgia NAACP is at: georgianaacp.org

We at GREEGREE (www.grassrootsep.org) will not meet Monday, November 28, 

so we can devote those 2 hours to phone banking etc.

Save Our Democracy!!! Thank You….