Dianne Feinstein has, with Republican Robert Bennett, introduced perhaps the worst bill yet drafted on the issue of electronic voting. Meet S.3212, the Bipartisan Electronic Voting Reform Act.
S.3212 does not require a voter-verified paper record, paper ballot, or paper anything. The bill allows "independent records" of ballots which could be electronic, audio, video, pictorial, or "other independently produced record." The bill is so crappily written that it seems these independent records don't necessarily have to be seen by the voter before she casts her ballot. The bill places a representative of the voting system industry on the federal committee that drafts voting system guidelines (not an unheard of practice in the federal government, but the voting system industry just ain't ready for this kind of role, to put it kindly).
Click here to sign VerifiedVoting.org's action alert opposing S.3212. More on the flip.
Feinstein's bill is an important development, because she is the chair of Senate Rules, the committee that has jurisdiction over federal election law. Her cosponsor Bennett is the committee's ranking Republican. Even if their bill goes nowhere in this Congress, in 2009 it could be the template for e-voting legislation. These two are likely to be the key Senators on election issues for some time to come. Tomorrow they will hold hearings on S.3212.
S.3212 is shockingly poor legislation in a number of ways. See Verified Voting's critique of the bill for more information. States don't have to do anything with the "independent records." States would have to perform an "audit" of federal election results, but they could use any procedures they want to do an audit, including a sample hand count of ballots, a reprint of electronic records from election night, or host a barn dance and call it an audit.
The bill restricts publication of trade secrets plus "other confidential commercial information." That language might choke off the future public disclosure of voting system reviews, like the California Top-to-Bottom review and the Ohio EVEREST study.
DiFi and Bennett need to know that this bill is a nonstarter. Sign the VerifiedVoting.org alert. Your message will go to your Senators plus all the members of the Rules Committee.
It's too late to see many jurisdictions change voting systems in time for the 2008 election. But next year, I think Congress is likely to do something to address electronic voting. That something could be a bill that increases the transparency of elections - or damages it severely.
