Holt: “Furthermore, the real protection for any of us against -- you say it's being managed by a corporation, Microsoft or something -- the real protection against that is the audit. Every election will be audited. If the electronic count is different from the hand count on the paper ballots, the electronic count is finished, it doesn't mean anything, you don't use it, it's irrelevant. It is the voter-verified paper ballot that counts.”
Us: The tiny 3% spot check required by your bill is NOT an audit. It is NOT real protection. Evidence shows that most voters don’t verify the screen view of their electronic ballot, even fewer verify the hard-to-read paper printout. It will be a coincidence indeed if the 3% (or at most 10%) of the spot-checked printouts were some of the few that the voters actually did verify. The ability to perform good audits is dependent on having a reliable system….and that we do not have with electronic voting!. When a system is “out of control”…unpredictable…as are the present electronic machines given the extensive series of problems and inability to know when some viruses activate or changes made, a later check of 1-3 percent is more a “feel good” than a system that is trustworthy. We deserve real proof our elections equal voters intent!
Holt: “And I don't care what Microsoft does with their electronics in there.”
Us: To say that “I don't care what Microsoft does with their electronics in there” does not reflect the findings and concerns of most scientists and is in opposition to the right of citizens to know what is going on in the election process. We better care what is going on inside the voting machines. This head-in-the-sand attitude is in complete opposition to the right of citizens to observe their election processes. How can you claim to care about voter confidence when you endorse a bill that allows secret software to count votes?
Us: So who lobbied for the change?
Holt: “Microsoft did lobby strongly. It wasn't just Microsoft. It was everybody who—“
Us: Diebold?
Holt: “No, it was software -- the software industry.
Us: Well it's your bill.
Holt: “No, it's no longer my bill -- well, it's still my bill but it's been marked up in committee.”
Us: Mr. Holt, how can you allow your fellow Representatives to vote for ‘Microsoft 811’ without telling them of the changes, the industry lobbying, and in your own words “Unfortunately, the committee that made this change heard from Microsoft. They heard that voice…the software industry won”? Since when is it a rule that the group that lobbies hardest gets to set legislation?
Dr. Rebecca Mercuri: "Fully electronic systems do not provide any way that the voter can truly verify that the ballot cast corresponds to that being recorded, transmitted or tabulated. Any programmer can write code that displays one thing on a screen, records something else and prints yet another result. There is no known way to ensure this is not happening inside a voting system."
American citizens should not be forced to vote on machines deemed unsecure and unreliable. But they are — in thousands of jurisdictions. They are forced to cast their votes on machines whose results cannot be proven by the original source votes, whose software is a secret from the voters themselves. Correcting this intolerable situation must be the highest priority facing all of us before 2008 election.
It’s time to remove H.R.’Microsoft’ 811 from consideration and offer instead a “stripped down” bill focused on what would most secure the 2008 election. We have a crisis…an emergency facing 2008!
It’s time to ban DREs for national elections.
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