Kathy Dopp Says "Support Clean Elections in 2008"

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By Kathy Dopp, Posted by ncvoter (about the submitter) Page 2 of 3 page(s)

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2. removes the loophole where audits could be avoided by requiring any
state mandated recounts to manually count at least as many ballots as
the audit would; and

3. fixes the timelines to be reasonable for election officials to
replace existing DREs which do not meet the requirements for durable
paper ballots which preserve voter anonymity; and

4. fixes the funding to be more than adequate to replace all DRE
voting machines and conduct audits; and

5. removes any requirement for text conversion technology - it gives
the choice of allowing voters with disabilities to verify their vote
by conversion of either the text or the marked ballot; and

6. fixes the Internet connection clause to prohibit connections to
vote tabulating or ballot programming devices, as well as to vote
casting devices; and

7. changes the make up of the state audit boards to give states more
flexibility for appointing independent auditors as long as they meet
the GAO requirements for independent auditing; and

8. removes the extension of funding authorization for the Election
Assistance Commission; and

9. requires that paper ballots be available at all polling locations
for any voter which requests one and in case of problems with
electronic voting systems, and requires that those paper ballots are
counted with the other ballots cast on Election Day.

I am happy that so many of the amendments election integrity activists recommended were made to HR811, and that the bill is now reasonable for election officials (allow sufficient time and funding), and comes close to accomplishing what we all want - verifiably accurate election outcomes.

Please make up your own mind to support HR811/S559 based on actual facts.

Untrue rumours about the amended HR811 are being spread by a prominent "election integrity activist", whose final recommendations are
consistently the same as election officials who are against any
mandated independent audits of election results and against any
federal legislation which would force election officials to replace
current voting equipment. Please keep in mind that some "election
integrity activists" may have financial or other incentives to "not"
quickly solve our country's election problems and may be attempting to
kill any and all federal election reform legislation by employing
disingenuous, illogical arguments.

For instance, some of the opponents of HR811 formerly opposed full software disclosure requirements in the original HR811, yet now are opposing HR811 because it does not require full software disclosure.
See
http://electionmathematics.org/em-voting-systems/EIGroupsOpposePublicSoftware.pdf

In order to replace all digital recording electronic (DRE) voting
machines by 2010, full software disclosure cannot be required because
implementing voing systems which use fully disclosed software would
take at least 4.5 years to develop, test, do federal and state
certifications, purchase, do training, and implement.

In other words, there is a clear choice, either:

1. require full voting system software disclosure and wait 5 years to
replace all existing DRES due to the time it takes for development,
testing, certification, training, and implementation cycles; or

2. leave software disclosure essentially the same as it is today (as
the amended HR811 does), and immediately replace (by 2010) all DREs
with existing optical scan paper ballot systems that are already
federally certified

Some election officials and voting machine vendors are actively
fighting against the revised Holt bill for two reasons:

1. many election officials do not want election results to be
subjected to independent audits (even though election officials
neither have to pay for or conduct the audits - although they must
participate and secure the ballots), and

2. voting machine vendors want to be able to sell DRE
electronic-ballot voting machines which are more profitable for them
than selling paper-ballot optical scan systems.

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