This article discusses the problems with H.R. 811 and the problems MoveOn has in how it is handling this (and other) Election Integrity issues.
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On Sep. 1, MoveOn.org Political Action sent members an email asking them to vote on whether MoveOn should support Rep. Rush Holt's election reform bill, H.R. 811.
This article discusses the problems with H.R. 811 and the problems MoveOn has in how it is handling this (and other) Election Integrity issues.
H.R. 811 is on the
docket to be voted on this week in the House of Representatives. Contact your Representative now!
MoveOn ignores most of the issues
H.R. 811 is 60 pages long. MoveOn's summary is less than 20 lines. It leaves out many, many issues, and does not give links to any further discussion. How can you ask for direction on a very complicated and technical issue, without providing background?
Ellen Theisen's article,
Rush Holt's HR 811 Does More Harm than Good , describes many of the flaws in the current bill.
MoveOn lists H.R. 811 supporters, but not opponents
MoveOn lists People for the American Way, the Brennan Center, and Common Cause as supporting H.R. 811. It does not list opponents. In fact, most of the Election Integrity community either opposes H.R. 811 or has not taken a stand.
The following organizations have campaigns asking Congress to not pass H.R. 811 as is:
Others opposing the compromise include:
- Brad Friedman, of BradBlog.com,
- Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org,
- Mark Crispin Miller, author of "Fooled Again, How the Right Stole the 2004 Elections",
- Dennis Kucinich,
- John Gideon, co-director of Voters Unite! and editor of the Daily Voting News,
- Ellen Theisen, founder of and co-director of Voters Unite!,
- The Election Defense Alliance, HR 811 Unsafe for Democracy! Halt Holt!.
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen said:
I've worked with the author to try to strengthen the bill, but have not taken a position in support. Again, I am concerned that if we put the whole concept of a voter verified paper trail into statute and it's something that we know is problematic ... , we may find ourselves, once again, trying to improve something that's very expensive and that we'd better do right in the first place. (from audio linked in this article.)
Paper ballots or paper trails?
MoveOn refers to the bill as Holt's "paper ballots bill, H.R. 811". To most people, a paper ballot is like an absentee ballot, i.e. a piece of paper or cardboard which is marked by pencil or pen. Many electronic voting machines produce a paper trail on a strip of paper, like that of an ATM or cash register. Most of us would not consider this to be a paper ballot, but it is considered a "paper ballot" by H.R. 811.
However, most of these "ballots" are never counted. Instead the voting
machines totals of the electronic ballots are used. The paper strips are used only if there is an audit or recount. Calling this a "paper ballots bill" is misleading.
Recent developments - Secretary Bowen's findings
Secretary of State Debra Bowen commissioned a
Top-To-Bottom Review of California voting systems. The findings included:
- There are attacks which will work on electronic voting machines despite the presence of a voter verified paper audit trail.
- It was easy to bypass the physical security measures installed by the vendors, such as tamper evident seals, without any trace of tampering.
- Malicious code planted on Sequoia or Diebold electronic voting machine could infect the central tabulator and change the entire election.
Since the voting machines are distributed throughout the jurisdiction days or weeks before the election, the last two findings put the entire election at risk.
H.R. 811 would provide over a billion dollars to add paper trails to existing electronic voting machines, and to buy new electronic voting machines. Does this make sense given the ease of attack?
Other developments -
An independent report on the 2006 primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio showed that 10% of the paper trails were either missing or unusable (
The Coming Paper-Trail Debacle?). It also found "one in six electronic voter tallies did not match the election's paper trail" (
Report on Diebold Voting Machine Fiasco Triggers Dem Outrage).
Dan Rather Reports on HD.net showed Sequoia intentionally sabotaged the paper ballots sent to Palm Beach County in 2000 (and only to Palm Beach County). This explains the hanging chads. The program also reported on how ES&S has for years ignored the fact that the touch screens in their iVotronic voting machines often don't work properly. These are the machines used in Sarasota County, where there were 18,000 missing votes in a Congressional race. See Dan Rather Reports, Episode 227, "
The Trouble with Touch Screens" or, for an indexed transcript of the one hour program, click
here.
New Jersey passed a law in July, 2005 requiring paper trails on electronic voting machines. In July, 2007, New Jersey tested three paper trail systems submitted by vendors, and found they did not meet the specification in the law! (
New Jersey Tests Find Flaws in Printer Performance, Could Jeopardize Election Accuracy).
H.R. 811's destructive amendments
H.R. 811 originally mandated public disclosure of all the source code used in programming the election system with the vendors retaining proprietary rights. Due to heavy
lobbying by Microsoft and others, the public's right was removed. Instead, only "qualified experts" would be able to see it after signing non-disclosure agreements. This would, for the first time, codify in law that our votes may be counted by secret code, code which we can not examine. As
Teresa Hommel of WheresThePaper
says:
"These paragraphs explicitly sell out American democracy to corporate commercial interests. The EAC and vendors, without other stakeholders such as states, parties, and citizens, will develop a process to protect private interests from public knowledge of how our elections are conducted."
The May 16 amendments also weakened the voter's right to request a paper ballot, if she didn't want to use an electronic voting machine.
The July 27 amendments move the dates back. Many of the other benefits which were to be in force for the 2008 election will only take effect in 2010 or 2012. With the amendments, a jurisdiction with paperless electronic voting machines will be able to buy paper trail printers for their electronic voting machines and use them until 2012.
It also removes the requirement that the paper used in the paper trail be "durable". This will allow flimsy paper which is unsuitable for recounts and audits.
It adds a requirement that voters not be required to handle a paper ballot.
There are no existing systems, either electronic or not, that meet the stated requirements for 2012. The one billion dollars appropriated in this bill may be spent on systems which must be replaced by 2012.
The bill assigns to the Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) a host of new powers and responsibilities. This is an agency which has been rocked by scandals this year:
- The EAC changed the text and conclusions of their consultant's report on voter fraud (voting twice, voting for dead people, etc.), and would not allow the authors to comment on the changes for months (A Rigged Report on U.S. Voting?).
- The EAC suppressed their consultant's report on the effect of voter ID laws, until forced to reveal it.
- The EAC refused to accredit Ciber Inc. to continue testing election systems due to lack of proof they did the required tests. However, the EAC did not tell reveal this, so that elections officials continued saying their systems were proven safe due to thorough testing by Ciber, which has certified systems used by about 70-80% of the voters nationally. The problem was revealed six months later in a New York Times article.
- The EAC guidelines, against which systems are tested, contains a huge loophole that allows testers to pass a system even if it doesn't meet the EAC guidelines! (See section B.5 of Volume 2 of the Guidelines).
Do we really want to greatly increase the EAC's power and responsibilities?
MoveOn out of touch for Election Integrity issues?
MoveOn's messages on Election Integrity always come from Noah Winer, who is MoveOn's Media Action Director. I am on many Election Integrity mailing lists, have attended many conferences, and read much on Election Integrity. However, I have never seen anyone identifying themselves with MoveOn in any of those places in the past few years. I think if MoveOn wants to play a role, they should have someone spend who can spend a considerable amount of time on Election Integrity issues. If not, they shouldn't issue alerts just because someone at PFAW or Common Cause tells them to.
Who is for H.R. 811?
There are a few people in the Election Integrity community who are actively campaigning for H.R. 811. One is Kathy Dopp of the National Election Data Archive. She summarizes her views in
An Analysis of the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act" (H.R. 811) . PFAW and Common Cause are for H.R. 811; in fact Ralph Neas of PFAW is supposed to negotiated the compromise of July 27.
What if I voted already in the MoveOn poll?
If you still have the MoveOn email and want to change your vote, try voting again. I'm not sure what this does; there is no error message, so it is worth a try.
Additional resources:
Brad Blog's H.R. 811 resource page
Black Box Voting
Bruce Schneier's CryptoGram Newsletter - lead article is on Voting Systems and presents an entirely different perspective on security.
Authors Website: http://election-reform.org, http://electbowen.org
Authors Bio: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.