February 8, 2007 at 22:00:24

What's Wrong with Holt II (HR 811)

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Bev Harris (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

For OpEdNews: Bev Harris - Writer

You may have received one of the mass e-mails today from Common Cause or PFAW
urging you to support hurried passage of the new Holt Bill. Below is a concise
list of problems with the bill. And you should know:

- Common Cause and PFAW lobbied for HAVA.
- Common Cause and PFAW then lobbied for full funding of the DRE purchases.
- Common Cause told its members to support Holt II (HR 811) two weeks before
they knew what was going to be in the bill
- PFAW put deceptive bullet points on its Web site regarding the bill (but
removed them when Brad Friedman confronted them on the deceptions)

- Open Voting Consortium has publicly come out against the Bill
- Black Box Voting has publicly come out against the Bill
- Brad Friedman has publicly come out against the Bill
- Jon Bonifaz (VoterAction.org / Demos) has publicly come out against the Bill
- Paul Lehto has publicly come out against the Bill
- Democracy for New Hampshire has publicly come out against the Bill
- John Gideon of Voters Unite has refused to support the bill

and there will be more.

PROBLEMS WITH THE BILL

1. Deceptive language. Calls a paper TRAIL a paper BALLOT.

2. Billion-dollar unfunded mandate: Requires text conversion technology in every
polling place. At $7000 per machine for 185,000 polling places, you do the
math. See this article for documentation on the billion-dollar boondoggle:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/46649.html

The bill is not talking about scanner wands, folks.

Note that only two vendors currently manufacture the needed technology, and one
(Populex) has as head of its advisory board Frank Carlucci, the former chairman
of the Carlyle Group, former CIA director, who was Donald Rumsfeld's roommate
in college. Every polling place in America. Is this really what you want? Isn't
it time to read the fine print on this???

3. Makes the scandal-ridden EAC a permanent fixture and increases its power --
Open Voting Consortium statement: "Holt contemplates the invasion of these
United States by the Federal government. If passed, it would BREAK the voting
system in the states while establishing a dictatorship to handle things: the
Election Assistance Commission ("EAC" or just "the Commission") with its four
commissioners appointed by the president of the United States."

4. Loss of secret ballots for the Military

5. No recognition of citizen right to oversight. Audit provisions do not allow
either citizens or candidates access to any records for meaningful audits.

6. Conflicting requirements -- ie, must have text converters by 2008 and must
study how to best do the conversions by 2010.

7. Language on disclosed source contains an error in that it doesn't deal with
COTS - meaning, any electronics component with a chip on it would be required
to disclose source code. There are literally hundreds of commercial off the
shelf components in the system -- printers, video drivers, motherboard
components -- that contain firmware, and these are manufactured all over the

world. The bill would require Hitachi, Seagate, Fuji, Western Digital to open
up their code for their commercial products if used in voting machines.
Effectively eliminates the use of electronics while at the same time mandating
electronics.

1 | 2

http://www.blackboxvoting.org

Bev Harris is executive director of Black Box Voting, Inc. an advocacy group committed to restoring citizen oversight to elections.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Contact Author

Contact Editor

View Authors' Articles

Book Recommendations for " 2006 Election"

Change and Continuity in the 2004 and 2006 Elections
by Abramson P

$46.95
Lowest New Price $19.44
Number of pages: 324
Publisher: CQ Press

Democracy Under Pressure: An Introduction to the American Political System, 2006 Election Update
by Milton C. Cummings

$161.95
Lowest New Price $70.80
Number of pages: 792
Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing