Documenting Chain of Custody
Under HR811 , the states will need to come up with a new process for documenting and implementing chain of custody, and all the costs associated with it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but as a federal mandate, it is unfunded in the bill. States will require additional staffing and poll workers in order to follow the chain of custody not just with ballots but with the software configuration side. On the software side of things, states will need to allocate qualified personnel and somehow find a way to make the entire vendor process accessible to those personnel.
Auditing and Reporting Results to The Commission
HR811 mandates a second new state function to comply with complex, time consuming, and labor intensive auditing and reporting protocols. Because it requires audits to be done in situ at the polling place where the ballots are stored, staff needs to be found to oversee and properly manage the audits. States may need to add personnel, including accountants, managers, and statisticians at both the jurisdiction and state levels to reconcile audit results, and to complete the reports - each of which require states to report on at least fourteen data points multiplied by at least four different types of votes cast - in a manner timely to ensure the state's ability to certify election results within constitutional time tables. All of this for a process, as defined in the bill, that has questionable value in terms of improving election integrity.
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And now the details.
Removal of Safe Harbor
HR811 does not include any safe harbor language for its mandates. It does not include a state planning process by which states can interpret the bill's requirements. Additionally, it broadens citizens' rights to sue a state for noncompliance.
HR811 directs states to comply while simultaneously granting to the Executive Branch broad oversight, further complicating and compromising the ability of the states to administer independent and fair elections, and further raising the risk of legal interventions caused by differences of interpretation for compliance. The lack of safe harbor applies to every provision in the bill, the most significant of which are listed below.
- Compliance with Executive agency standards
- Mandate for new ballot text read back
- Voting system certification responsibilities by the states
- Chain of custody procedures and documentation
- Auditing and reporting prior to certification of election results
Throwing Elections to the Courts
With no provisions to allow states to interpret the law, with no defined safe harbor provisions in the law, the result is that interpretation of the law lands squarely in the hands of the Judiciary.
Since Election 2000, we have seen an ever increasing number of elections being thrown to the courts, all with results that can be defined as questionable at best. Certainly when appointed judges are made the referee of elections, the elections no longer belong to, or represent the will of, the citizenry. Judicial control over our elections is the antithesis of the consent of the governed.
The Executive Branch Defines America's Voting Systems
HR811 makes the Election Assistance Commission (The Commission) the final authority to define "what is a voting system", and "how a voting system meets accessibility standards".
This means that The Commission's Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) actually become federal law. It also means that the only way that states can find safe harbor in complying with the law it to adhere to the VVSG.
What are The Commission's Voting System Standards?
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