Election Systems! My #1 priority for Democracy, closely followed by Media Reform.
There's been a rush (no pun intented) to pass this bill, but we need to proceed with caution.
Rush Holt's new bill, H.R. 811, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007, supposedly fixes problems in election systems.
However, I believe the Daily Kos community should follow up on the objections raised by key citizen activists before "jumping on the bandwagon" to support the bill.
Can you help?
Objections and links are listed below the fold:
H.R. 811, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007.
Read the bill at:
http://thomas.loc.gov/...
Against this bill are groups and experts I take very seriously:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/
http://www.bradblog.com/
http://www.VoterAction.org and
http://www.demos.org/...
- Paul Lehto (Attorney who specializes in cases involving election law, business fraud and consumer law, has been retained for work on the issues surrounding the illegal election conditions in San Diego County. He filed a lawsuit in Washington state against Sequoia Voting Systems Inc.)
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Soon there will be an analysis at: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/...
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WHY Black Box Voting does NOT support this bill. I'm feeling a bit dim, so I hope the rest of you can help us all sort this out.
From
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
- DECEPTIVE LANGUAGE. Calls a paper TRAIL a paper BALLOT.
- BILLION DOLLAR UNFUNDED MANDATE: Requires text conversion technology
in every polling place. At $7000 per machine for 185,000 polling places,
you do the math. See this article for documentation on the
billion-dollar boondoggle:
http://www.bbvforums.org/...
The bill is not talking about scanner wands, folks. Or if it is, they'd
better specify that, and soon! Except that apparently, it's too late to
make changes.
Note that only two vendors currently manufacture the needed technology,
and one (Populex) has as head of its advisory board Frank Carlucci, the
former chairman of the Carlyle Group, former CIA director, who was
Donald Rumsfeld's roommate in college. Every polling place in America.
Is this really what you want? Isn't it time to read the fine print on
this???
- MAKES THE SCANDAL RIDDEN EAC A PERMANENT FIXTURE AND INCREASES ITS
POWER. Alan Dechert, from the Open Voting Consortium says it best: "Holt
contemplates the invasion of these United States by the Federal
government. If passed, it would BREAK the voting system in the states
while establishing a dictatorship to handle things: the Election
Assistance Commission ("EAC" or just "the Commission") with its four
commissioners appointed by the president of the United States." Bradblog
on latest EAC scandal: http://www.bradblog.com/...
- ALLOWS LOSS OF SECRET BALLOTS for the Military
- NO RECOGNITION OF CITIZEN RIGHT TO OVERSIGHT. Audit provisions do not
allow either citizens or candidates access to any records for meaningful
audits.
- CONFLICTING REQUIREMENTS -- ie, must have text converters by 2008 and
must study how to best do the conversions by 2010.
- LANGUAGE ON DISCLOSED SOURCE CODE CONTAINS AN ERROR in that it
doesn't deal with COTS - meaning, any electronics component with a chip
on it would be required to disclose source code. There are literally
hundreds of commercial off the shelf components in the system --
printers, video drivers, motherboard components -- that contain
firmware, and these are manufactured all over the world. The bill would
require Hitachi, Seagate, Fuji, Western Digital to open up their code
for their commercial products if used in voting machines. Effectively
eliminates the use of electronics while at the same time mandating
electronics.
- MUSH LANGUAGE. (Example: "The manufacturer shall provide the
appropriate election official with the information necessary for the
official to provide the information...")
- UNREADABLE: People complain about their legislators not reading the
bills -- well the way this is written, it guarantees they won't read it.
No Appendix, so sections of the bill require the reader to actually go
find a different bill and look up sections in it in order to make sense
of the current bill. (example: "Section 301(a)(1) of such Act (42 U.S.C.
15481(a)(1)) is amended (A) in subparagraph (A)(i), by striking
"counted" and inserting "counted, in accordance with paragraphs (2) and
(3)");
- AUDIT PROTOCOLS NO ONE AGREES WITH, even fans of audit solutions
- LOOPHOLE ALLOWING INTERNET CONNECTIONS for central tabulators and
ballot definition software
- LOOPHOLE ALLOWING MANUAL AUDITS TO BE BYPASSED states with
computer-only recount protocols
- LOOPHOLE ALLOWING MACHINE COUNT TO SUPERCEDE VOTER VERIFIED PAPER
when fuzzily described circumstances arise. Los Angeles Registrar Conny
McCormack already has tried to co-opt this (Feinstein senate hearing
yesterday) into meaning when there is a printer jam damaging the paper,
the machine count will trump.
- SUPPORTS DREs (Touch-screens and other on-screen voting techniques
that are NOT recommended by NIST)
Citizen groups worked hard to help develop this bill, but it doesn't solve the HAVA problems....Plus, watch out for what the lobbyists do to it.
Black Box Voting says:
We're going to have to roll up our sleeves to get what CITIZENS want.
More action-oriented, solution-focused information to follow. Black Box
Voting is working right now with many other group leaders to brainstorm
the best way to deal with this.