1. Unreasonable Time Frames for Software Disclosure & Text Verification Technology Implementation: If voting system software were fully publicly disclosed (with no exemption for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software), voting equipment would be more secure, reliable, have longer life cycles, and be less costly. However, HR811 and HR1381 allocate:
* Insufficient time to develop standards and testing procedures, to develop new voting systems, and to purchase and implement new voting systems for text verification for voters with disabilities.
* Insufficient time to develop standards and testing procedures, develop new verification and testing infrastructure, purchase and implement new voting systems with publicly disclosed software
2. Insufficient Budgets
* Nationwide audits with 99% minimum success rates would cost approximately $8 Million per federal election (for HR811/HR1381 audits with their 10% success rates cost would be $14 Million/election).
* Costs to immediately replace all in-auditable paperless DRE machines with 44,000 optical scanners and 67,000 ballot marking devices (BMDs) for voters with disabilities and alternate language requirements would be $555 Million (HR811/HR1381 costs to replace all DREs without durable paper that protects ballot privacy with 74,000 optical scanners and 124,000 BMDs would be $990 Million).
* HR811 and HR1381 budget nothing for the ongoing infrastructure and technical manpower that would be required to verify that the publicly disclosed software is the same as that actually used during elections.
3. Audits are Ineffective, Administratively Burdensome, and Costly:
* When tested against actual 2002 and 2004 election results, the HR811/HR1381 election audits have minimum success rates of 10% but cost up to 94% more and are more administratively burdensome than 99% success rate audits.
4. Strengthens the role of the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC): HR811 and HR1381 consolidate and strengthen power in the executive branch of government in an agency that is currently run by former board members of The Election Center. The Election Center was co-founded by Doug Lewis, a used computer vendor and Doug Wilkey, the current EAC Director, in order to bring election officials together with suppliers of election products. The current EAC executive director Wilkey and its current chair, Davidson, were board members of The Election Center, and became NASED officers when The Election Center incubated NASED; and now they control the EAC. Wilkey, Lewis, and Davidson were largely responsible for the control, selection and oversight of the voting machine test labs and the certification of voting machines; and have resisted measures to subject election results to independent scrutiny. According to GAO reports, the EAC has not accomplished the tasks it was assigned by Congress in 2002. It would be dangerous to our form of government to cede so much power over elections to the federal executive branch.
5. HR811 does not provide for meaningful Citizen Oversight over elections via access to election records, and HR1381 does not budget for the equipment that is needed by election officials to make election records publicly available (up to $30 Million to provide special scanners to each jurisdiction that could easily scan all election records to make electronic and paper copies).
6. HR811 permits network connections to election management systems, allowing remote manipulation of election results. Network connections are unnecessary for either upgrading systems or for uploading election results. These tasks can be accomplished using removable write-once physical media.
7. HR811 has a loophole that allows states which conduct “recounts” to avoid having their election results subjected to any independent audits, despite the facts that
* most state recount procedures are not independent or publicly verifiable; and
* many state “recount” procedures involve merely rerunning electronic tallies and involve no manual audits; and
* many state “recount” procedures involve manual audits that are insufficient; and
Founder and President of US Count Votes, dba The National Election Data Archive and volunteer for honest, accurately counted elections since 2003. Masters degree in mathematics with emphasis on computer science. Has written numerous academic and scientific papers with computer scientists, statisticians, and mathematicians on election integrity topics, inluding how to calculate minimum manual audit amounts necessary to ensure election outcome integrity.
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