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Lowell Needs More Poll Watchers

by Dr. Anne Mulhern

During the most recent elections held on November 7 of last year, I chose to be a poll watcher at my local polling place.

I have been interested in voting and elections since the previous century, when I attended a talk held by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Mathematics Department about the mathematics of voting algorithms. So-called “Ranked Choice Voting” and plurality voting are the two algorithms most voters in Massachusetts will have heard of by now, although “Ranked Choice Voting” as it is discussed in Massachusetts is better known as instant run-off voting.

Although voting security should be a non-partisan issue, it has always been a partisan issue.

When Aviel David Rubin wrote “Brave New Ballot” in 2006, his experience was, almost uniformly, that most Republicans then in office steadfastly denied any possibility of election fraud, while many Democrats both in and out of office claimed that they were deeply concerned about election integrity. Nowadays, every election at the state or national level is inevitably followed by claims of fraud by the losing party.

Generally speaking, efforts to restore election integrity to even its prior pre COVID-shutdown level have been met with strenuous opposition, this time from members of the Democratic Party. Having observed this unfortunate situation, I have become deeply interested in the security of election procedures. Wishing to observe for myself how polling places are managed in Lowell, I notified Greg Pappas, the Director of Elections in Lowell, of my intention to be a poll watcher, and resolved to show up at my local polling place at 7AM, right when it opened, to watch the polls.

I would like to thank all the poll workers at my polling place for their amiability while I observed them at their work. I would also like to thank those same poll workers for working at the polls from 6AM to about 9:30 PM, and thus making it possible for me to cast my vote in that election.

I learned much from the experience, as there were many aspects of the polling procedures which I had not thought to consider. Moreover, I observed that the key defect of electronic voting addressed in “Brave New Ballot” is, thankfully, absent from Lowell voting; Lowell election procedures use a “Voter Verifiable Ballot” and thus are not subject to the many security flaws of the “Direct Recording Electronic” systems that were popular in the 2004 elections and are still, alas, in use in a number of these United States. As far as I can tell, the required security procedures that are followed at the polling place are useful, and would effectively guard against certain forms of election fraud.

But once begun, the work of a poll watcher is never done.

I would be very grateful if more Lowellians, experienced poll watchers or not, would gather with me and continue the work in the upcoming election in March. The plan is to read a recently published book, “The Voter Fraud Manual” by Dan McGrath, and to consider forms of election fraud that might be devised against the Lowell election procedures and how these might best be combatted. We will also observe elections as they come up not just at the polls on election days but also every other kind of voting such as voting-by-mail, ballot drop boxes, and early voting. We will also attempt to make contact with other voting integrity organizations throughout the state and the country.