THURSDAY ACTION ALERT re Voting Reform

Promoted by Steven D

I’m very concerned for our planet on so many levels. But my IMMEDIATE concern is with our vote. The question at this point isn’t what should be done. It’s what can be done. And nothing can be done without your help.

There is only ONE bill in Congress standing between us and disaster. I’m just furious with well-meaning but unrealistic activists like John Gideon, Bev Harris at Black Box Voting, Mark Crispin Miller, Nancy Tobi, and other activists who don’t realize that their efforts to sink this bill only help the evoting vendors. What they really want is handcounted paper ballots (HCPB), people counting our votes as in the olden days.

I want a hand count AND a computer count. Paper counts can be fudged. Votes can be “lost,” added, or altered when counted solely by hand. And machines can be easily rigged. But I don’t believe it’s likely that people would be able to rig the hand count AND the computer count so that the counts match. That becomes astronomically more difficult.

The bill in question, HR 811, the bill Rush Holt put forward, offers a substantial hand count of 100% of the ballots (defined as the paper, not electronic, record, in the bill’s explicit language) in from 3-10% of the precincts, depending on the margin of the victory. The closer the victory, the more ballots will be counted. The wider the margin, the fewer ballots to audit to verify the results. So Holt’s bill offers my dream solution – a system in which machine counts and hand counts are used to count our votes.

A well-informed, very sane bunch of groups support HR 811: from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to Verified Voting (led by David Dill) to VoteTrustUSA to the National Election Archive to the Sarasota (Fla.) Alliance for Fair Elections (SAFE) to People for the American Way, and many other groups are asking you to help protect our elections by registering your support RIGHT NOW for HR 811.

Even if you called before, since the vote is coming up right now, in the next three days, PLEASE CALL AGAIN.

The sooner our vote is protected, the sooner I’ll be talking about all those incredibly interesting, if all too often misrepresented, episodes from history. But nothing is more interesting to me right now on the planet than ensuring the survival of our democracy. And we can’t do that without some much needed federal protection requiring not only paper records, but a mandatory audit of those records. Frankly, we can’t do it at all, if HR 811 doesn’t pass. PLEASE GET BUSY.

Here’s a summary of the bill, from Rep. Holt’s office:

Fundamental Provisions of H.R. 811
The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007

• A voter-verified paper ballot must be produced for every vote cast beginning with the November 2008 elections.
• Paper-based voting systems (including thermal reel-to-reel systems and  systems accessible to voters with disabilities that also used or produced a paper ballot) used in 2006 can be used until 2012; only systems that used no paper ballots at all must be replaced or upgraded by November 2008.  Durable, scannable, accessible paper ballots must be used by 2012.
• Upgrade requirements mean that, by 2012:
• where ballot marking devices are used, they must be able to deposit the ballots “automatically” into a “secure container” for mobility access, and
• where direct recording electronic machines (DREs) are used, a mechanism must be provided that allows disabled voters to privately and independently verify the contents of the paper ballot printed by the DRE printer.
• The paper ballot is the vote of record in all recounts and audits, as a check on electronic tallies.
• In 2008, all voters are entitled to vote by paper ballot if the voting machine in their jurisdiction is broken, and in 2010 and after, for any reason.
• Routine random audits must be conducted by hand count in 3% of the precincts in all Federal elections, and 5% or 10% in very close races (but races decided by 80% or more need not be audited).
• Wireless devices, Internet connections, uncertified software and undisclosed software are banned in voting and tabulating machines.
• $1 billion in funding is authorized for system replacement and upgrading in FY 2008, with additional upgrades authorized in FY 2009.
• $100 million each fiscal year is authorized to fund the audits.
• An arms-length relationship is established between test labs and voting machine vendors.
• The bill is silent on re-authorizing the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and does not address military and overseas balloting.

PLEASE. Michelangelo didn’t get to wait for the perfect block of stone. He worked with what he had. We must do the same. The choice is between some reform and NO reform. Choose wisely.

UPDATE: There’s an effort underway to tack on an amendment that would gut the provisions for 2008 deadlines, pushing things out until 2010 or later. Please make sure you tell your Congressperson to vote NO on the ‘unfunded mandate’ amendment or any amendment offered that might push out the deadlines. We need reform NOW, not years from now. The rules committee will be discussing this bill at 3pm Eastern time today (Noon on the West Coast) so time is running out – PLEASE CALL NOW!!