Have just left the House Admin hearing in D.C. -- during the hearing Zoe Lofgren (D-16th CA) announced rather dramatically to Rush Holt that she would add her co-sponsorship to his bill.
Ms. Lofgren's co-sponsorship made 218 house members that have decided to support the Holt bill. This means that we are over the top -- more than half of the 435 members of the House of Representatives support voter-verified paper records with audits.
Don't get too excited -- tomorrow is the last scheduled legislation day before the leave for the Election Recess. So it is likely that despite all this support HR 550 will not pass in the 109th Congress -- but it is on track to go places in the 110th!
Marybeth in D.C.
PS -- if you didn't actually SEE the hearing on C-SPAN or webcast, don't believe the Associated Press article saying they "punched holes" in the paper trail -- it was a very good hearing for OUR SIDE.
I have a lot of respect for Marybeth and the work she's done, but I think on this issue, her enthusiasm is misguided. HR550 may be a wolf in sheep's clothing, institutionalizing an inadequate system for detecting election fraud. The essence of the problem is that if only 2% of precincts are audited, that works out to 8 precincts in a Congressional district. Roughly speaking, if the number of precincts that are corrupt is less than 1/8 of the total, then fraud they will probably go undetected. Add to this the fact that there is no provision in the bill for what to do about fraud if is detected, and I think it's a defective bill. It goes without saying that as the bill proceeds through committee and gets amended, "compromises" will likely make it worse.
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