Holt's Paper Trail and Audit Bill Held Up in Committee

IanS

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Thursday May 03, 2007 · 10:09 AM PDT

2007/05/03 · 10:09

Rush Holt's D(NJ-12) Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility bill (H.R. 811) was postponed for markup in House Administration today. I just got word that it will be heard again on Tuesday. It is essential that the committee, on both sides, pass this bill so that the full House can vote on it as soon as possible.

The bill would require that electronic voting machines produce a paper record by November 2008 for every vote cast. Seventeen states plus the District of Columbia currently use paperless voting machines. It would also require states to conduct mandatory random routine audits (a mouthful I know). Currently, more than 75% of the voting systems in the country are unaudited, which scares the hell out of me.

This has been taking long enough. Delay after delay in the last congress allowed tens of thousands of people to lose their votes across the country (that we know of). I want to have as much confidence in my vote being counted as I do in my pay checks being credited to my bank account. We all know what the problems are with the machines, we know how to fix them, when will we see action?

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