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September 2, 2007 at 10:22:17

Headlined on 9/2/07:
MoveOn and HR811 (the Holt Bill)

by Nancy Tobi     Page 1 of 3 page(s)

www.opednews.com

 

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Many people have emailed me asking what does the NH Fair Elections Committee think of the so-called "compromise" version of the Holt bill being brought to the US House floor this coming Wednesday.

They want to know, how should they vote in MoveOn's latest poll, asking their feelings about the bill. We see this as a good sign, that after months and months of pro-811 propaganda and ignoring the voting integrity movement's concerns, MoveOn seems to be open to a new look at their steadfast and inexplicable support of HR811.

So here's the straight poop. When they say the latest version is a "compromise" bill, what this means is that Congress has compromised the will of the people, the good of the nation, in favor of industry lobbyists. In December 2006 wethepatriots.org submitted to every cosponsor of HR811, including NH Congressman Hodes, a letter in opposition to HR811 with suggested amendments. This letter was signed by 800 American citizens and organizations.

How many industry lobbyists does it take to outweigh 800 ordinary Americans? Apparently as many as can fit into a room with the House Administration Committee.

In July 2007 Mark Crispin Miller revealed what Congressman Rush Holt's counsel had to say to voting integrity activists about this latest "compromise" version of HR811:

There is no doubt that Rush Holt has, in working on his bill, unduly heeded the concerns of interested corporations. This is not a speculation but a fact, which was revealed to me straightforwardly by Holt's own counsel, Michelle Mulder, who is, of course, a fervent advocate for HR 811. Recently Michelle tried, via email, to respond to some of the concerns expressed by me and several other activists, at one point asserting that the bill will not legitimize the use of secret vote-counts.

In response, I pointed out that the continued use of DRE machines, which HR 811 would permit, makes secret vote-counting inevitable, since there's no way to watch computers add up votes, or send them on to tabulators, or manage any other data.

And then I made this second point about the actual secretiveness enabled by Holt's bill:

"Unless this point in the legislation has been changed, the bill as marked up in committee now stipulates that the e-voting software be available only to 'qualified' individuals, who must sign strict non-disclosure agreements."

(This was an extraordinary change, because the early version of the bill had ordered that such software must be readily available to everyone. See my vlog on this.)

And here is Mulder's staggering reply:

"That's not what the bill said when introduced. Therefore, you can take up your concerns with Microsoft and others in the proprietary software industry. During Committee proceedings they lobbied very heavily against the language that was in the bill as introduced and none of you lobbied in favor of the language that was in the bill as introduced, and thus, the software industry won. It's very simple, really."

In other words, companies like Microsoft, Diebold and ES&S had problems with the early version of Holt's bill; and Holt himself not only listened to them, but obliged them, so that his "election reform" bill would now make our system even more undemocratic than it is already. Of this development Holt's office made no public mention, as if those private companies' dictation of the law was no big deal.

And this, Holt's counsel says, is not Holt's problem. In fact, it's our fault, for not having "lobbied very heavily" for our position (which would have been a little hard, since Holt's people have consistently refused to talk or listen to the bill's opponents).

In any case, if we don't like it, we can somehow "take up our concerns" with Microsoft et al.--and do so without Rush Holt's help.

The NH Fair Elections Committee remains opposed to HR811, and we hope to be reporting, after Wednesday's vote in the House, that our two NH Democratic representatives will have realized they are in Washington to represent New Hampshire, whose key stakeholder constituencies (NH Secretary Bill Gardner, the NH Association of City and Town Clerks, the NH Fair Elections Committee) uniformly oppose the bill, and not the Democratic Party, which seems intent to ram it through come hell or highwater.

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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.

 

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3 comments

I am concerned about the intentions of our elected leaders.
Stephen HartI am concerned about the intentions of our elected leaders.

I was very dissapointed in MoveOn survey. I voted No to Holt

I was very dissapointed in the text MoveOn accompanied their survey with.

They mentioned the red herring of handicapped voting as though it was the driving issue, and insurmountable in the absence of Holt, though some handicapped organizations have acted with direct funding from voting machine manufacturers. The only "controversy" they mentioned was receipt type ballot records (which is bad enough to kill the measure, in my opinion). Then they failed to mention several concerns that have been voiced, such as yours and many others which Blackboxvoting.org has documented for the last two years.

As you say, it is a very complex bill, and MoveOn seems determined to engineer favorable survey results for it. After voting against it, I emailed MoveOn with my concerns.

by Stephen Hart (1 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments) on Monday, September 3, 2007 at 5:37:12 PM
 


Computer Consultant
Mark-MyWordsComputer Consultant

Another Point of View, Supportive of HR-811

Despite the changes to the bill brought to light here, there's a reason HR-811 maintains a strong base of support among the public and various progressive groups.  I'd like to make quick mention of it here.

While it's true that HR-811 does not provide an air-tight solution to the potential for electronic voting machines to report erroneous polling results, its core purpose, that of a meaningful audit that will catch errant software releases and voting machine models red-handed, is still intact, stronger than it was in Holt's earlier bills.

Auditing doesn't prevent fraud, but it will undoubtedly bring it to light.  If there's anywhere near the level of faultiness and/or fraud in these machines as most readers of this publication, myself included, think there is, HR-811 will create the political climate -- through mass public awareness of the cancer of electronic voting machines -- that proponents of much stronger controls would need in order to have sweeping changes find their way through a largely out-of-touch, influence-drenched Congress.

(My favorite "control", by the way, is Kucinich-promoted Canadian-style Hand-Count Paper Ballots...  I just believe it's HR-811 that will pave the way for that kind of sweeping change.)

That's why HR-811's supporters are still with it, despite a conference process that seems to have had as many vendors as issue advocates present.

by Mark-MyWords (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 7 comments) on Monday, September 3, 2007 at 6:27:35 PM
 


Jerry Berkman has been active in the Election Integrity movement since the 2004 election. He helped organize the grassroots support for the campaign of Debra Bowen to be California Secretary of State.

Jerry retired in May, 2005 after working for 35 years as a computer programmer, the last 30 at the University of California, Berkeley.

He earned a Computer Security Certification from the SANS Institute in 2003, with a paper on Security Issues in Running an Email Server.

Jerry BerkmanJerry Berkman has been active in the Election Integrity movement since the 2004 election. He helped organize the grassroots support for the campaign of Debra Bowen to be California Secretary of State.

Jerry retired in May, 2005 after working for 35 years as a computer programmer, the last 30 at the University of California, Berkeley.

He earned a Computer Security Certification from the SANS Institute in 2003, with a paper on Security Issues in Running an Email Server.

Auditing won't find flaws


How do you guarantee the ballots you are auditing are the ones that were counted?  This requires chain-of-custody controls, which I doubt will be adequate/secure.

In California, if a paper ballot does not go through the optical scanner properly, the elections staff either "enhances" the ballot or copies the votes onto another ballot.  This process will not be audited.

John Tuteur, County Clerk of Napa County, CA testified, July 2, 2007:

In the last election, Napa had to duplicate almost one fourth of the paper ballots. The duplication is not currently observed, but could be.

 

by Jerry Berkman (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments) on Monday, September 3, 2007 at 11:53:55 PM
 

 

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