AfD Alert: Tell the House to Vote No on H.R. 811
The Alliance for Democracy
Alert--Tuesday, September 4, 2007
HR 811 comes to a House vote Wednesday, September 5--tell your Representative to vote NO!
This Wednesday the House of Representatives is expected to vote on H.R. 811.
The original purpose of the bill was to provide a paper trail for the 2008 election. However, the bill has been so rewritten that it is unrecognizable to the experts originally consulted.
Because it requires a computerized text conversion device in every polling place, H.R. 811 would effectively rule out handcounted paper ballots, or non-computerized voter assistive devices that are accessible, less costly, and that avoid computerized vote counting. These text conversion devices represent an under-funded mandate for states, and a windfall for the e-voting industry.
The bill also gives the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), composed of four White House appointees, responsibility for setting specifications for all voting equipment - DRE and paper ballots - in every state, as well as vote-counting and recount procedures. None of the states will be able to legislate their own security requirements if this bill passes, and progress on the state level barring the use of electronic voting machines will be undone.
Not surprisingly, H.R. 811 is opposed by the National Association of Counties, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the National Association of Secretaries of State.
For a more detailed description of the EAC's proposed powers, go to http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/opedne_nancy_to_070831_eac_for_dummies.htm
written by Nancy Tobi, who has been following the EAC since it was set up in 2002. For additional info and talking points, see "This Week's Actions" at Election Defense Alliance's website, www.electiondefensealliance.org
Please Call!
Take a few moments and phone or fax your Representative in Congress and tell them to vote against H.R. 811. If you don't know your Representative's number, call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
3 comments:
Holt is like the computerized voting itself: not fixable.
One correction, and another point of view. While HR-811 indicates devices such as text conversion in order to allow the visually impared to privately verify their own ballots, it actually forbids such devices from being used during an HR-811 audit. (In fact, some models that will be purchased are designed specifically to be personal ballot reading devices, and would be ill-suited to mass counting as with traditional optical scanners...) HR-811 stipulates that all audits be hand-counted.
Here's another view of the bill.
Despite the changes and features of the bill highlighted a bit here, there's a reason HR-811 maintains a strong base of support among the public and various progressive groups.
While it's true that HR-811 does not provide an air-tight solution to the potential for electronic voting machines to report erroneous polling results, its core purpose, that of a meaningful audit that will catch errant software releases and voting machine models red-handed, is still intact, stronger than it was in Holt's earlier bills.
Auditing doesn't prevent fraud, but it will undoubtedly bring it to light. If there's anywhere near the level of faultiness and/or fraud in these machines as most readers of this publication, myself included, think there is, HR-811 will create the political climate -- through mass public awareness of the cancer of electronic voting machines -- that proponents of much stronger controls would need in order to have sweeping changes find their way through a largely out-of-touch, influence-drenched Congress.
(My favorite "control", by the way, is Kucinich-promoted Canadian-style Hand-Count Paper Ballots... I just believe it's only an audit guarantee such as HR-811 that will pave the way for that kind of sweeping change.)
That's why HR-811's supporters are still with it, despite a conference process that seems to have had as many vendors as issue advocates present.
Sadly, Holt's bill is not enough. Ballot scanners will not guarantee a perfect election. Computers, paper, people will fail. We must revamp election laws to be on par with technology to recognize election anomalies and statistically improbable results. Moreover, until we fix our election laws to protect us from machine and human error, and HUMAN INTERPRETION of election results our election process will continue to be broken. The courts should not decide the people's choice. In 2006, it was the failure of Florida's election laws that permitted an election with statistically improbable results to stand (18,000 undervotes). Our 2000 debacle with the pregnant chads resulted from failure to maintain the voting equipment properly. However it was the failure of Florida's election laws that permitted the chaos that followed. Had Florida's election laws caught up with technology, both elections would have been an automatic re-do.
Moreover, if we are to secure one voter, one vote…every-time integrity in our election process, we must also implement high-bar guidelines for voting machine providers and elections officials to uphold. What would the profit-conscious business world do? We must be more business wise. We need tighter, better, wiser controls.
While the heroine in A MARGIN OF ERROR: BALLOTS OF STRAW scoffs at the notion of a silent coup marching across America in her fictitious voting machines…. It could happen more easily than any of us want to believe.
Lani Massey Brown, MARGIN OF ERROR: BALLOTS OF STRAW, political intrigue of a stolen election, Amazon com.
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