The Commission’s standards, VVSG I, become effective December 13, 2007. VVSG I represents a dramatic change from currently existing 2002 Voting System Standards in voting system specifications and the testing and certification requirements. This might be compared as moving from Windows 3.1 to Windows 98.
VVSG II, estimated to become effective in 2010, represents another complete change in computerized voting system architecture, and goes so far as to encompass paper ballot systems as well. This can be compared as moving from Windows 98 to Windows Vista.
As anyone with a home PC knows, it is quite impossible to run software applications designed for Windows 98 on a Windows 3.1 system, and even more impossible to run applications designed for Windows Vista on a Windows 98 system. In fact, most software companies simply don’t support the earlier versions of Windows, which means that PC owners need to upgrade their systems to the new version of Windows, or forego using any new features or software designed for it.
By creating a situation wherein states need to comply with The Commission’s standards as the de facto “safe harbor”, states will all need to constantly upgrade accordingly, as they will not have the option to “forego using new features,” no matter how costly, unwieldy, or unnecessary, unless they want to risk legal action.
What Affect Do the Commission’s Voting System Standards Have on Running Elections?
The practical implications of codifying The Commission’s standards into federal law, as the only possible safe harbor for states to find compliance with said law, is that every voting system in the United States must undergo a complete overhaul.
Just like the hapless PC owner, election administrators who don’t upgrade to the new voting system requirements will find they have no support (legal or otherwise) for running their old systems, and they will not be able to integrate new accessibility or other voting system requirements into their existing systems.
They will be unable to comply with The Commission’s standards, which HR811 will have codified into Federal law.
They will also find themselves at legal risk for unlimited lawsuits by citizens unhappy with their interpretation for implementing the far reaching and currently unachievable requirements of the law.
For a look at post-Holt America, where states are backed against the wall in the face of unlimited lawsuits if they don’t meet The Commission’s standards for accessible voting, have a look at what happened following the passage of HAVA:
June, 2004. Voting equipment giant Diebold, in collusion with the National Federation for the Blind, engaged in the lawsuit shakedown, as reported on BlackBoxVoting.ORG at the time:
In June 2004, a story about Diebold's million-dollar payment to the National Federation for the Blind (NFB) ran in the New York Times. At the time, Diebold was trying to get its voting system into the state of Ohio and the NFB was helping out by threatening to sue counties that didn't execute contracts for Diebold touch-screens…The NFB settlement letter was worded only slightly more politely than this: "We'll make our lawsuit go away if you hurry up and buy those touch-screens."
Read the full account, “Diebold and the National Federation for the Blind” found on BlackBoxVoting.ORG here:
Read the full account, “Diebold and the National Federation for the Blind” found on BlackBoxVoting.ORG here:
Now every patriotic American wants to broaden voting access to persons with disabilities. But the federal approach to this is to mandate expensive high tech computerized equipment, which makes the entire voting system opaque to the voters and the American citizens. This is incompatible with the principles of free, fair, open, democratic elections.
The State of New Hampshire demonstrated a different approach to broadening voting access to persons with disabilities. The State went to the disability community and asked what their top concerns were. The State learned that the top two concerns were sensitivity training and physical access. New Hampshire put its money and resources to improving these two areas, thereby effectively opening voting access to more of its residents, and all without inserting complex and expensive technology into the picture. You can learn about the New Hampshire disability solution for voting here.
Nancy Tobi is cofounder, former Chair, website editor for Democracy for New Hampshire (DFNH), and Chair of the NH Fair Elections Committee. Nancy is the author of numerous articles on election integrity, including "The Gifts of HAVA: Time to Ask for a Refund," "What's Wrong with the Holt Bill," "We're Counting the Votes: An Election Preparedness Kit," and "Hands-on Elections: An Information Handbook for Running Real Elections, Using Real Paper Ballots, Counted by Real People". Her article about election reform fallacies is included in the April 2008 book "Losers Take All" edited by Mark Crispin Miller.
Nancy believes in the principles embodied in our Constitution, and that groups like Election Defense Alliance and DFNH can play a unique role by empowering ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
It's been hard to write about this bill in sound bites. It's a highly complex bill. The answer to your question is, if we have lost our mechanism to throw the bums out - to oust the criminals occupying our halls of power - then we have lost it all. To regain our land of the free and the brave, we have to stop them at this game of taking over our elections.
Congress and the White House are colluding with private interests to control our elections. This has to stop.
It is a criminal act in and of itself.
Our Consitution guarantees us the right to a republican form of governance. This is defined as the citizens - the voters - controlling the government and not the other way around.
Because Congress and the White House want to turn this upside down, where they are controlling us - via our elections - they are committing unconstitutional acts.
Nothing new, right? But this is the very mechanism we have that controls everything about the country.
We need to fight this. Just as the founders fought the monarchy and gave us the documents that laid the foundation of our free country. The documents and the rule of law established therein that Congress and the White House are violating.
Unfortunately, they make it pretty complicated. Hence my six page article. We have to plow through a lot of horse manure to get our fields to bloom again.
by
Nancy Tobi (69 articles, 4 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 53 comments)
on Saturday, July 21, 2007 at 8:36:55 AM
This link is to the Republican Office of Vernon J. Ehlers (House Administration)
Why aren’t we seeing this link posted on this site with some commentary? It would seem that this should be big news to those in opposition to DREs, as it is the latest in requests for amendments to HR 811, by the DRE companies.
We have written extensively about the vendor influences
This particular article does not deal with the issue of DREs or corporate influence, but numerous articles in opposition to 811 have noted the unholy alliance between Congress and the vendors.
Most notably in 811, this is manifested in Congress's obscene concession to their industry masters, which resulted in the insertion of language enshrining trade secrecy for vote counting software into federal law!
You have to wonder, who do these so-called public servants think they are! Putting secret vote counting into federal law.
How stupid do they think we are anyway?
by
Nancy Tobi (69 articles, 4 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 53 comments)
on Thursday, July 26, 2007 at 5:10:56 PM
