The Lewis testimony can be found at http://www.wheresthepaper.org/HouseAdminTestimonyDougLewis3_20_2007.pdf. Lately I’ve been spending a good deal of time thinking about who are these people who are my would-be allies, but support the Holt Bill, which I believe to be terribly damaging to our ability as a people to regain control over our democracy. Doug’s email came in the midst of my pondering. One particular comment, excerpted below, really moved me and provided me with needed insight:
I thought that you might be interested in my comments on Doug Lewis’s testimony regarding the Holt Bill (HR 811)… The comments have generated considerable debate, generally agreeing that HR 811 needs revision, particularly among advocates of verified voting.
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I am torn by my 14-year crusade to require a voter verifiable paper audit trail in all direct recording voting equipment and the new problems that would inevitably arise if HR 811 should be enacted in its current form.
That really struck me to think about what it must be like to have waged a battle for so long for something which may turn out not to be the solution you believed it would be. What strength it takes to struggle with oneself; how few people are willing to do that.
A few weeks ago I went to a forum at Rutgers Law School and listened to computer scientist Ed Felten (http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/) talk earnestly about the problems with DREs and how adding paper is better than not having paper, but it isn’t going to make the DRE secure. And yet he was supporting the Holt bill, still holding onto the machine with the paper and I thought, why? A couple of days after that I read that computer scientist Avi Rubin, who was traveling the same path Ed Felten was on, had testified about electronic voting and had changed his mind, rejecting DREs with paper as a solution. He wrote in his blog, http://avi-rubin.blogspot.com/2007/03/todays-congressional-hearing.html,
Another member of the committee gave me the best opening I think I've ever had. He asked me if I thought it was possible to have a trustworthy and secure election using paperless DREs. I replied "no". He then said, "Why?" It was a question I was hoping for. I explained that a software only system, especially one as complex as a DRE where all of the voter input and vote tabulation takes place in a closed box, cannot possibly be audited. There is no way to know for sure that the totals produced by the machines at the end of the election correspond to the votes that were cast by the voters.
Finally, I was asked if I thought that a DRE with a paper trail was an adequate voting system. I replied that when I first studied the Diebold DRE in 2003, I felt that a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) provided enough assurance. But, I continued, after four years of studying the issue, I now believe that a DRE with a VVPAT is not a reasonable voting system.
In fact, there is a fascinating study from 2001 (interestingly enough, published shortly before HAVA was enacted) which concluded that not only were hand-counted paper ballots the most accurate of all vote counting methods, measuring by residual vote rate, but that every single technological "innovation" of the last century - lever machines, punch cards, optical scan, DRE - actually measurably decreased the accuracy of the voting process. Their conclusion:
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