OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: HR811 Alert! Tell your Rep to vote NO!!!

3. HR 811 requires that all DREs produce a "voter-verified paper ballot" which is totally impossible to make happen because the only ballot that a DRE can produce is an electronic one comprised of countless electromagnetic impulses that are invisible to the voter and is, therefore, impossible to verify. Instead, the only tangible object a voter can "verify" is a "paper record" (also called a "paper trail") that is produced by adding a printing device to each DRE. (Translation: Now even more of the citizens' money will flow into the pockets of the machine vendors.) And, it follows that, even though the voter's selections can be correctly reflected on the "paper record", there is no way to know if these same selections were cast on the electronic ballot inside the machine, therefore, these "paper records" create a false reassurance to the voter

4. HR 811 calls for audits of the "voter-verified paper ballots" that many experts say will not be effective and, in fact, will most likely be rigged. . Since HR 811 requires that only 3% of the precincts are to be scrutinized for foul play, it is more appropriate to call these "spot checks" rather than audits because the term "audit" means a total review of all the records. And, even if a true audit were called for in the bill, it would be impossible to accomplish because studies have found that 10% of the "voter-verified paper records" are rendered unreadable due to paper jams and printing failures. For the sake of proving the further fallibility of these "spot checks", let's suspend reality and say that 100% of the "paper records" were available in every precinct. Now what easily comes into play is the likelihood of insiders secretly rigging the counts of the "paper records" so they match the machine counts when the time finally comes to publicly preform the "spot checks". This is exactly what occurred in the largest county in Ohio after the 2004 presidential election. And, gee, it only took three years to finally bring into court and convict the election officials who had performed the rigging, which meant that the "official" results were never questioned. For these reasons, relying on audits (i.e., spot checks) to catch any manipulation of the DRE machines and then for these discoveries to have any effect on the already announced "official" results on Election Night, is a totally useless strategy for securing our elections.

5. HR 811 would make the highly partisan and secretive Election Assistance Commission (EAC) a permanent agency and give it increased influence and power over all the states, thereby centralizing what was always intended to be a very diverse and decentralized system of conducting elections. Also worrisome is the fact that the four members of the Executive Committee of the EAC are Presidential appointees. Over the past few years, since it was first created and funded by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the EAC has been incompetent, behind schedule by years and derelict in its duties. They have also shown to be unduly influenced by the interests of the voting system corporations.

Karen Renick

Director, VoteRescue

www.VoteRescue.org

karen@voterescue.org

"Let the ballot boxes speak, so that the souls can be quiet."

~sign on a fence near the Federal Electoral Tribunal in Mexico City

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