EXCLUSIVE: HOLT SAYS ELECTION REFORM BILL TO REQUIRE 'PAPER BALLOTS'!

[BradBlog]

EXCLUSIVE: REP. HOLT SAYS HIS ELECTION REFORM LEGISLATION WILL REQUIRE 'VOTER-VERIFIED PAPER BALLOTS'

Congressman, Author of Leading U.S. House Election Reform Bill, Replies in BRAD BLOG Comments to Our Article Critical of His Statement Suggesting Touch-Screen Systems Should Not Be Replaced Due to Cost Factors...

In a posted comment at The BRAD BLOG, Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) has responded to an article we filed earlier this week in which we expressed concern about a recently quoted comment of his. Our original piece discussed his statement at an Election Reform symposium at Rutgers University, as quoted on Tuesday by New Jersey's Herald News, about the financial cost of moving away from Electronic Voting Machines in light of recent purchases made by jurisdictions across the country.

The Congressman's comments are, indeed, quite notable as we read them, and may well change the entirety of the debate on Capitol Hill and elsewhere concerning upcoming Election Reform legislation....

COMPLETE STORY, HOLT'S POSTED COMMENTS IN FULL:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3895

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Also today, a very important Guest Blog from Tova Andrea Wang...

Where's the Voter Fraud?
A Democracy Fellow and EAC Commissioned Researcher Says the Right is 'Propagating a Myth' in Order to Pass Disenfranchising Laws Said to Combat the Phony Perception They've Created
Not One Case of Voter Fraud Found by RNC in 2006...

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3891

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---
Brad Friedman
THE BRAD BLOG - The uprising continues...
http://www.BradBlog.com
VELVET REVOLUTION's Election Protection Strike Force!
Of the people, by the people, for the people...
http://www.VelvetRevolution.us/ElectionStrikeForce

[The Political Eye]

1. Seems like the win in November has put the adults back in charge!

[papau]

21. But Holt's Bill needs massive changes - as suggested by Kathy Dopp

Recommendations for Federal Legislation To Ensure the Integrity of our Democracy

(under Copyright law (17 USC 106) but not trade secret rights -Prepared by Kathy Dopp, 435-658-4657, [e-mail] Nov. 30, 2006 updated 12/9/2006)

http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/EI-FederalLegislationProposal.pdf

Recommendations for Federal Legislation To Ensure the Integrity of our Democracy

<snip>
1 Manual Audits: Require manual audits of machine vote counts sufficiently statistically valid to ensure that electronically-counted election outcomes are correct.

2 Voter Service Reports: Require states to submit timely reports of detailed election data that can be used to measure voter disenfranchisement and voter service levels.

3 Auditable Voting Systems: Provide funds for upgrading voting systems for jurisdictions that have unauditable voting systems, but fund only “fully-auditable” voting systems where all able-bodied voters can directly record votes on a paper ballot that is voter-verified.

4 Fund Manual Audits and Voter Service Reports: Provide funds for conducting sufficiently statistically valid manual audits of machine vote counts and for producing voter service reports in federal elections.

5 Teeth: Provide certain and swift penalties whenever an election jurisdiction fails in a transparency, auditing, or reporting obligation.

6 Public Election Records: Require election officials to make publicly available in original paper and electronic form all election data and election records that would reveal fraud or errors in elections or are necessary to verify voter service reports and manual audits, prior to certification of results.

7 Election Monitoring Website: Create a website containing a publicly accessible database for logging and tabulating voters’ complaints in elections; and for publicly displaying the auditable, audit, and voter service reports from the states.

8 Submission of Reports: Require state election officials to submit auditable, audit and voter service reports to the US GAO prior to state certification of election results.

9 Public Disclosure of Voting System Software: Require public disclosure of voting equipment as a condition of any further contracting to enable post-election voting machine integrity verification.

10 Prohibit Certain Network Connections: Outlaw Wide Area Network connections to, and wireless capability in, voting equipment and prohibit voting through any network.

11 Public Right to Observe: Require jurisdictions to allow citizens to observe all aspects of elections.

12 Vote Count Audit and Recount Committee: Create a U.S. Vote Count Audit and Recount Committee whose functions include approving state election audit and recount procedures and policies; and setting standards for state auditable, audit, and voter service reports.

13 Repository for Voting System Disclosure: Fund a repository for publicly disclosed voting system software or require “OVC Listed”.

14 Prohibit Practices that Disenfranchise Voters: See a specific list in “Detailed comments” section.


Definitions:
Auditable Report: means a report of detailed machine vote counts and ballots cast for each vote counting device in each precinct, for each election office, for each candidate and ballot contest, for each vote-type including Election Day, early, provisional, absentee, mail-in, military, etc. The auditable report must be released publicly prior to randomly selecting machine counts to audit so that the public can verify the audit. All ballot types must be tracked separately for that jurisdiction, from provisional to absentee to polling place electronic to polling place paper,... for each vote counting device for each race. <snip>

Prohibit Practices that Disenfranchise Voters: For example, Prohibit voting by public networks or by faxing ballots to any office other than the local election office; No onerous paper weight requirements for voter registration forms; Penalties for ballot tampering or vote fraud, and for fraudulently losing registration forms or changing them prior to submission; State issued ID not required, but any reasonable proof of residency for voter identification to vote; Voter sign-in system must be a paper system, not an electronic one subject to crashes or network failures; No one other than the voter or a non-partisan election official (or a postal clerk) may make any marks on a ballot envelope, except for an authorized person who returns a ballot to a polling place may sign it as required by the jurisdiction; Penalties for systematically challenging voters; Consider how voter rolls may be scrubbed for people who moved, died, or are convicted of crimes; Consider how voter registrations are verified against other databases. (Not everyone has a driver’s license or state issued ID card. Sometimes it is unclear what is a middle name or a compound last name; or people use different forms of their names. In some foreign names, the family name is first not last. For guidance on implementing voter registration databases see http://acm.org/usacm/VRD ); Paper ballots should be available at all polling locations for voters who prefer not to vote using electronic ballots and in case of long lines, power outages, or equipment failures. <snip>

===================================================================================

I recommend DUers email Congress to have reintroduced Holt Bill include the above -

Please support of HR 550, also known as the Holt Bill, but only as modified as suggested by Kathy Dopp.

We do not need a handover of election control to the executive branch as Holt's proposed regulatory agency would be, nor do we need contracted recount firms, but we all like

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005’’.

SEC. 2. PROMOTING ACCURACY, INTEGRITY, AND SECURITY THROUGH VOTER-VERIFIED PERMANENT RECORD OR HARD COPY. (changing "verified" to "verifiable")

So lets get stricken from the Bill:

SEC. 4. PERMANENT EXTENSION OF AUTHORIZATION OF ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION.

SEC. 5. REQUIREMENT FOR MANDATORY MANUAL AUDITS BY HAND COUNT.

SEC. 6. REPEAL OF EXEMPTION OF ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION FROM CERTAIN GOVERNMENT CONTRACTING REQUIREMENTS.

and lets get Kathy's suggestions included in the Holt Bill.

Call Congressman Holt's office:

Congressman Rush Holt
District Office
50 Washington Rd.
West Windsor, NJ 08550
Phone - Fax -

Washington Office
1019 Longworth House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone - Fax -


Other Organizations you might want to check with to verify you want to support the Kathy Dopp modifications to the Holt Bill, with the EAC independent of the Executive Branch:

TrueMajority: [e-mail]

VoteTrustUsa.org: [e-mail]

[Jackpine Radical]

2. With BBV out the window, disenfrachisement is what they have left.

"Not One Case of Voter Fraud Found by RNC in 2006."--So what? It COULD happen, ya know. And we need some means of keeping all those welfare queens and radical geezers from screwing up the elections.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. Cool!

This is good news.

[David Dunham]

4. Most states will not go to paper ballots. Too cumbersome.

[IndyOp]

11. David - Paper ballots include optical scan paper ballot cards that

can be counted by precinct scanners. Optical scan precinct-based systems are less expensive than DREs, easier to use for election officials, and do not pose the problem that DREs do in terms of what happens if the machine fails on election day. If the DRE fails on election day, voters are disenfranchised. If an optical scan reader fails on election day the ballots can be hand counted.

Further, the fact that voters mark paper ballots means that we can audit randomly selected precincts/machines to make certain that the readers counted the votes on the paper ballots accurately (because programming errors and/or cheating can and do happen).

Many states have adopted optical scan systems -- New Mexico is all opscan; it looks like New York is going that way; Indiana (my location) is 40% opscan but could convert pretty easily to 72% opscan by 2008...

It can be done!

:hi:

[papau]

18. Most states already have bought Holts idea via full paper trail.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/us/politics/24voting.html?ex=1316750400&en=af05de97347b6bb3&ei=5088&partner=rs

In the last year or so, at least 27 states have adopted measures requiring a paper trail, which has often involved replacing paperless touch-screen machines with ones that have a printer attached.

...about 10 percent of the paper ballots sampled from the May primary in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, were uncountable ..printers had jammed and poll workers had loaded the paper in backward...


..(with touchscreen voting they had) memory cards whose contents could not be electronically transmitted. In Montgomery County, election workers did not receive access cards to voting machines for the county’s 238 precincts on time, forcing as many as 12,000 voters to use provisional paper ballots until they ran out...

...mechanical problems at hundreds of sites with new voting machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems...

...in Tarrant County, Tex., machines made by Hart InterCivic counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were cast. The problem was attributed to programming errors, not hacking....


...A Princeton University study http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/princeton_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org released this month on one of Diebold’s machines... found that hackers could easily tamper with electronic voting machines by installing a virus to disable the machines and change the vote totals....

[BradBlog]

24. A paper "trail" is not a paper BALLOT!...

Holt's shift in language from Trails/Records to Ballots is what is notable about this news.

Paper "trails" are so 2005. And now discredited.

America needs a paper BALLOT for every vote cast.

Have I said that before? :-)

[Peace Patriot]

5. I've been saying for some time that it's all about the money--the billions in

electronic voting contracts by which Tom Delay and Bob Ney (abetted by corporatist 'Democrat' Christopher Dodd) corrupted our election system. This has been the MAIN OBSTACLE to reform, and why the problem is bipartisan--with these billions of dollars filtering through the fingers of legislators and election officials from BOTH parties, into the pockets of Bushite corporations. We've come across this all over the country: DEMOCRATIC officials defending non-transparent vote counting by rightwing corporations with very close ties to the Bush regime. Not just Republicans.

Add to this the filthy lobbying around the e-voting machines, and the culture of secrecy with which these private corporations have infected our election system--directly, through TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming of the machines, and in indirect ways as well (election officials treating the voters as "the enemy," and denying citizens information)--and you have an extremely difficult reform situation, with both parties colluding to prevent reform.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it is my memory of the Holt bill language that whatever they call it--a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)--it says that the "VVPAT" (or whatever) must take precedence over electronic totals in any dispute, which makes whatever it is they call it into a paper ballot. It gives the VVPAT legal standing as a paper ballot. No?

So I'm not sure that this is the problem--or the main problem--with Holt's bill. The main problem with Holt's bill is that it makes the "Help America Vote Act"--the worst piece of crap legislation ever passed by a US Congress--PERMANENT. It designates the President of the US--by means of his appointments to this Tom Delay/Bob Ney/Christopher Dodd creation--the so-called "Election Assistance Commission"--DICTATOR over US election systems. And it codifies and makes permanent this extremely harmful, fast-tracked conversion to electronics--that is, it endorses CORPORATE CONTROL over election results. HR 550 is an attempt to patch up, fix, put bandaids on, an extremely bad election system.

You know, whenever bureaucrats, politicians and corporate PR people create language like "Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail"--to mean BALLOT--watch you wallet! --for one thing. And, for another, the result is going to be a corporate resource war in the Middle East, and lots and lots of tax cuts for corporations and the super-rich.

What SHOULD be happening is the REPEAL of the "Help America For War Act."

And, in a better world than this one, the other thing that should be happening is stockade time for the executives of Diebold, ES&S and brethren, where American voters get to throw rotten fruit at them--dismantling of their corporations and confiscation of all their assets for the public good.

HR 550 will put the "trade secret" code in escrow, where it will only be available in case of a dispute (not to you and me). It provides a VVPAT (with legal standing as a ballot--if I recall correctly)--which will remedy egregious non-transparency in many state systems (which currently cannot even do an audit--no paper trail at all). It mandates a very inadequate audit (2% comparison of ballots/VVPAT with electronic totals). (In Venezuela, they STILL audit FIFTY-PERCENT of the vote, because electronic voting is so new--50%!). A 2% audit remedies the no-audit, or only 1% audit, current situations, but only to a very lame degree. THESE SYSTEMS SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN PUT IN PLACE WITHOUT A 100% AUDIT FIRST TIME AROUND, 50% AUDIT SECOND TIME AROUND, ETC. (Bush, and an intractable war, are the result of not doing so!) And if the Feds are going to dictate election law, they should make recounts easier and cheaper. They are now much too expensive, difficult and rare. This combines with the "trade secrecy" and the "culture of secrecy" to make the public nature of elections a thing of the past.

But most worrisome of all is this issue a president-appointed commission telling us how we're going to vote--and enshrining electronic voting as some kind of standard--a system that no doubt qualifies as the WORST election system ever created.

You know what I think? I think this is what Holt is hearing from corrupt election officials around the country--"But we've invested so-o-o much money in this!" The issue is their reputations, their careers--and in some cases outright corruption (getting caught). How can they save face?

Here's how: Keep the machines--for now anyway. But require a paper ballot, and do a 100% handcount, and post the results before any electronics are involved. They can use their shiny new crapass machines to double-check the handcount, and for storage/reporting of data. But we will be assured of proper counting. Instead of giving billions more in contracts to Bushite corporations, give it to election officials to pay for handcounters (better than we pay jurors).

What the hell is so difficult about COUNTING EVERY VOTE?

[w4rma]

6. Rep. Holt rocks! Holt's bill, HR550, is the bill to support. (nt)

[BradBlog]

25. Not yet...But it's getting closer... (nt)

[musiclawyer]

7. All absentee/mail ballot all the time

It's just a matter of time. It only makes sense. Most kids age 10 and younger probably won't know what a precinct is when they are grown up.

[msongs]

8. lost/hijacked mail, vote fraud, absentees entered into machines etc

why not just let your church fill out all your mail in votes for you? or your husband, behind your back.

and absentee ballots are no more secure than any other kind. they have to be scanned by machines or worse, hand entered into
bbv machines by somebody who may be biased.

at our precinct if we choose a paper ballot, it is entered into a machine just as if we voted on a machine ourselves. NO improvement.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[musiclawyer]

10. Oregon does it. They like it.

Almost half of california does it. It's way safer than anything else. If there's a problem, there is a paper hand count. What else do you want.

[IndyOp]

12. Oregon election activists I know say that *most* other states will *not*

implement vote-by-mail securely right now.

Oregon had a top-notch secure system in place before vote-by-mail. The local election officials in Oregon had a strong state organization and worked together over many years to implement the system in a few counties, then a few more, then most, and finally all counties.

The Oregon voter activists also recognize that without open source software and audits -- they are not any more confident that their machines are counting accurately than any of the rest of us are.

States with partisan election officials, poor guidance from the Secretary of State, high turnover rates among those who run elections -- these states are *not* ready for vote-by-mail.

Over time it could happen - but it will be a disaster if implemented without ALL of the security features Oregon has in place - so say the Oregon election activists I know.

[BradBlog]

26. IndyOp is exactly right here...

...Thank you for saving me the typing time :-)

[Patsy Stone]

9. Good going, Brad!

Thanks for keepin his feet to the fire.

I'll be interested to see what the "rewrite" looks like. If all goes well, it will be a completely different looking piece of legislation. If they take the easy way out, it will be tweaked ever so slightly, but probably not enough.

In this greatest of all democracies (Just go with it.), why is it so difficult to count the votes? My precinct has 1200 people, one-third to one-half of whom vote. How long does it take five old ladies to count 600 votes? Half an hour? An hour? This is actually a situation where technology causes more harm than good. It's time to go low tech, and I hope Russ Holt sees that.

[BradBlog]

15. Can you believe...

...in this greatest of democracy's (going with it) that we will consider it a victory when/if we can have a paper ballot for every vote cast?

Seems kinda like a no brainer, don't it?

I can't wait until this whole nightmare ends, and I wake up.

[Patsy Stone]

19. We can send a man to the moon

but we can't get paper ballots.

Here's hoping Rush does some good. :toast:

[IndyOp]

13. Brad - A printed receipt counts as a VVPB, I think...

If a DRE prints receipt, that counts as an auditable voter-verified paper record -- so it does not sound to me as if Congressman Holt's bill is going to require "voter-marked paper ballots" -- either optical scan or old-fashioned.

That's my 2-cents...

On edit: I wish that Congress would come up with the Billions of dollars it would take to junk ALL DREs and replace them with "voter-marked paper ballots" -- but I don't think they will and the states won't be able to find the money either.

[BradBlog]

23. Such *trails* don't currently count as *ballots*...

IndyOp said:

A printed receipt counts as a VVPB, I think...

If a DRE prints receipt, that counts as an auditable voter-verified paper record -- so it does not sound to me as if Congressman Holt's bill is going to require "voter-marked paper ballots" -- either optical scan or old-fashioned.
In the old version of Holt's bill (HR550) I believe it says that a "voter-verified paper audit TRAIL" would be the "ballot of record" for purposes of any recount.

That, however, is not good enough as a good hack of the touch-screen DRE's would ensure that the race wasn't close enough to require any such recount. Further, when DRE/touch-screens fail to work on Election Day voters can't vote, or are forced to wait in long lines, and they are then disenfranchised that way as well.

The new legislation, if Holt's comments posted at BRAD BLOG are to be taken at face value, would mean that a BALLOT (not a trail or record) would be required. And a ballot (unlike a trail or record) has a legal meaning. Essentially, it is the thing that is counted in an election.

In a worse case scenario (and it really *is* a worse-case scenario), if the so-called "paper trails" on DRE's were declared to be "ballots" that means there is now, at the very least (and, it *is* at the very least) a legal hook that would allow someone to challenge the results on the basis that an election was held and the BALLOTS were never actually counted.

Since we know that placebo paper trails on DRE's are not actually counted, and officials still use the machine numbers instead. At least as of now...

Brad

[Lugnut]

14. Yes!

K&R :kick:

[lovuian]

16. Awesome

Awesome!!!
:woohoo:

[AtomicKitten]

17. Rush Holt with perseverance finally prevails!

[WyLoochka]

20. Off Topic - but thanks much, Brad

for the new color scheme option. Previously, I had to rely on just exerpts posted here and about because I could not look at that mean green screen for more than 30 or 40 seconds without experiencing a hard burn to the old eyeballs.

[BradBlog]

22. We're nothing if not...

...pro-choice. Thanks for the thanks. Happy to serve...

Brad

[groovedaddy]

27. This is a start but it doesn't entirely get the job done

Security of the machines is the biggest problem. Even with a paper receipt, votes on the machine itself can still be "flipped." If they can't make them "hack proof" we shouldn't use them at all.
The paper trail comes into play in the event of a recount - having something to count is absolutely necessary.
If we have close races where there are recounts that take the race the other way, it will point out the lack of security on these machines.