Two students at the University of Arizona’s law school organized 80 people to watch polling practices and problems in Tucson.

Kane and Ford organized the Election Protection Team, and are reporting problems to Pima County from their command center inside the UA’s law school. Other volunteers are at the polls talking to voters, making sure the rules are being followed, and all the machines are working.

Only two hours after the polls opened, the election protection volunteers reported problems with both electrical voting systems and the optical scanners that tally people’s votes. The majority of these problems occurred on Tucson’s Southside, according to Ford, a third year law student.

The team is also keeping an eye out for Minutemen at Southside polls, because there is a high concentration of Hispanic voters in the area, according to third year law student Kane. The group is expected to disguise themselves as border patrol agents, with exposed firearms, and videotape people going into the polls and their license plates. Thus far no reports have tricked in about the Minutemen.

While they wait to see if the Minutemen show up, the volunteers aren’t sitting around or reporting technical problems. Early this morning, there were problems with poll workers not following the law. At one polling station they decided not to turn on the machine for people with disabilities, even though law requires that. The workers thought people would not use the ADA machine, so they decided to leave it turned off, according to second year law student Erick Gjerding who noted that poll workers do not have the power to make that decision. Workers at that same polling station were discussing ballot propositions with voters. The Election Protection Team reported the incidents to the county.

Watch my flixwagon video  to see Kane and Ford talk about why they started the election protection team, why it is important, and what they’ve seen.

The Election Protection Team started a blog to monitor all the problems in Pima County. Click here to see what’s happening.

To find out more about elections protection call: 866-OUR-VOTE