Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Holt's Election Reform Bill HR 811 Urgently Needs Reform

By Voters Unite
March 2, 2007

Ask your Congressmember to amend HR 811.

(Originally published at PDA)

There are many good provisions in the new election reform bill (HR 811 introduced by Congressman Rush Holt D-NJ), called the “Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007.” For example, it would ban wireless communications to reduce the possibility of some types of hacking; it would prevent Diebold, Sequoia, and other voting machine companies from using secret software on the voting machines; and it would require partial hand counts to check the accuracy of the machines.

However, the primary problem with the bill is that it allows the continued use of Direct Record Electronic (DRE), or “touch screen” voting machines, as long as they print out a copy of the electronic record of your vote for you to approve (called a “voter-verified paper audit trail” or “VVPAT”). But this “band-aid” cannot solve the systemic problems inherent to DREs. Democracy demands that DREs be banned from all American elections.

It has been said of those calling for a “ban DREs” amendment to HR 811 that we intend to “kill” the bill. Nothing could be further from the truth. We do not seek to remove this bill from consideration; we seek to correct a fundamental omission, which we believe presents a grave danger to all future elections.
Why do we consider a ban on DREs an essential requirement? Because DREs constitute a new and subtle form of high tech voter suppression. Consider:

• DREs (often called “touch screens”) cause long lines, forcing many legally registered voters to leave without being able to cast a vote, when too few machines are provided or the machines are delivered late, fail to start up, or break down. When voters make their selections on paper ballots, voting doesn’t depend on the availability of a machine.
• DREs disrupt the electoral process, as they have in the still-contested Jennings/Buchanan U.S. Congressional election in Sarasota, Florida, as well as in many less publicized races across the country. If the voters had voted on paper ballots, there would be no more speculation about the 18,000 missing votes. The ballots would be available for inspection. VVPATs (“paper trails”) would not have solved the problem in Sarasota.
• DREs change voters’ selections from one candidate to the opponent, with no way for the voter to know if the right candidate was ultimately recorded inside the computer’s memory.
• DREs confuse and cause anxiety for voters who aren’t computer-savvy, many of them elderly.
• DREs confuse pollworkers, who often have to call on technicians for help during the election, causing further delays for voters.
• DREs disenfranchise minorities, as shown by the plunge in undervote rates of Native Americans and Hispanics in New Mexico when the state banned DREs and converted to paper ballots counted with optical scan technology.
• DREs make ethnic profiling possible when voters are asked to choose between English and an alternate language, since software in the machines behaves differently based on the language chosen.
• A DRE "ballot" is only an invisible, intangible record in computer memory, secret from the voter, rather than a paper the voter can know exists by seeing or touching it.
• With DREs, it is impossible to determine voter intent in recounts or investigations, because there is no original, observable record of the vote.
• DREs are too complex and too high-tech for ordinary citizens to understand, effectively monitor, or measure for accuracy. They eliminate the electorate from vital aspects of the electoral process.
• A printed copy of the electronic vote record (VVPAT) does not correct any of these problems. What’s more, studies show that most voters do not even look at the VVPAT to make sure it matches their selections on the screen. When they do, it’s difficult to notice errors.
• With DREs, the voting public has no basis for confidence in election outcomes, which causes a lack of trust in our American democracy. This, alone, is a grave threat to the health and security of our nation.

A reform in our election systems is needed NOW, but the new technology proposed by Rush Holt’s HR 811 HAS NOT YET BEEN INVENTED.

The bill, as written, would foster a fresh round of DRE development, rushed to market and certain to continue the technology's historical pattern of disenfranchising voters as well as wasting taxpayer dollars.

Tried and true technology is available now to convert the entire country to paper ballots. New Mexico’s smooth and speedy transition from DREs to optical scan paper ballots proves it.

Generations of Americans have fought long and hard to win the right to vote, and we must always remain vigilant to combat new attempts to disenfranchise voters. Today we are faced with a new, high-tech form of voter suppression – DREs. If HR 811 is to protect the precious right to vote, it must be amended to ban their use.

For links to more information see http://www.votersunite.org/info/2007ElectionReform.asp

Labels: DREs, election integrity, election reform, Grijalva, Holt bill HR811, Pastor, voters unite, voting rights

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Saturday, February 17, 2007

Holt Bill HR 811 Needs Essential Amendments

Essential Revisions to HR 811

If you want to endorse this statement, please email to John Gideon

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The groups and individuals endorsing this statement commend Congressman Rush Holt for all that is excellent in HR 811, the “Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007” -- such as the ban on wireless communications, requirements for disclosed source code and hand audits, and the mandate that testing labs be contractually independent from vendors. However, we cannot, with good conscience, give our endorsement to HR 811.

We believe we have a duty to call attention to the bill’s unacceptable shortcomings and to call for the needed amendments.

1)

We strongly object to the co-opting of the term "paper ballots," by inaccurately applying that term to a DRE printout (often called a "voter verified paper trail" or just a "paper trail"). The bill must be amended to require real, firsthand voter-marked paper ballots[1] (counted by hand or by optical scanner) and to ban the use of direct recording electronic (DRE) voting systems, which have proven themselves to be dangerously unreliable and only produce secondhand machine-printed paper trails that require voter-verification as a separate step by each voter. Florida's Congressional District 13 race and the report of conflicts between the paper trail records and the electronic ballots in Cuyahoga County, Ohio are only two recent examples of how elections using DRE technology cannot be trusted and how confusing the technology can be to voters. Evidence overwhelmingly confirms that, even with the addition of a voter-verified paper audit trail, DREs cannot be made to serve our nation's need for universal citizen enfranchisement. It would constitute a grievous error to further codify the use of DRE systems, as is currently done by the redefinition of "voter verified paper ballot" found at the beginning of HR 811's Section 2(a)(1). We believe that all voters should have equal access to accurate, secure, meaningfully observable, and verifiable election systems. DREs have been touted as providing this kind of election system, but America’s experience with hundreds of documented DRE failures and thousands of voters disenfranchised by them proves otherwise. Any voter required to use a DRE is at once relegated to second-class status, given that other voters can vote on voter-marked paper ballots. Evidence shows that voter-marked paper ballots, combined with existing ballot-marking interfaces, provide both equity and parity to disabled and language minority voters in full compliance with ADA and HAVA. Banning DREs would encourage the use of voter-marked paper ballot systems — currently available and deployed in many jurisdictions — and would provide America with a fair, consistent, unified, and superior method of conducting elections. Conversely, HR 811 as written would require upgrading or replacing all DREs currently deployed and would foster a fresh round of DRE technology development, rushed to market and certain to continue the technology's historical pattern of disenfranchising voters as well as wasting taxpayer dollars. Recommended revisions: In the proposed HAVA Section 301(a)(2)(A)(i), after "created through the use of a ballot marking device or system," delete "or a paper ballot produced by a touch screen or other electronic voting machine." At the end of subparagraph (i), add "Paper printouts produced by a direct recording electronic voting machine are specifically excluded." In the proposed HAVA Section 301(a)(2)(D), change "voting machine" to "tallying machines", and change "voting-machine-to-voting-machine" to "tallying-machine-to-tallying-machine". In the proposed HAVA Section 301(a)(12)(B)(v), change "voting machine" to "voting equipment".

Read the rest by clicking here.

Labels: AuditAZ, ballot, DREs, HAVA, Holt bill HR811, HR550, paper trail

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