Daily Archives: September 6, 2007

support HR811 if you are so inclined

Posted on September 6, 2007 | Leave a comment

I am nuetral / undecided about HR811. If you have decided one way or another, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has an advocacy page for supporting HR811. You should be able to edit the message to indicate whatever view you have; support/rejection/something more nuanced.

From the the EFF HR811 advocacy page:

Along with requiring machines to produce a voter-verified paper ballot, H.R. 811 mandates random audits and many other critical reforms. For over three years, EFF has been helping Rep. Rush Holt move this legislation forward, and support from individuals like you has been crucial in garnering an astounding 215 cosponsors. Hundreds of activists joined EFF for Washington, D.C. lobby days in 2005 and 2006, and thousands of letters have poured in to Congress.

Now those efforts are paying off, and victory in the House is within reach — take action now and fight for fair, transparent elections.

NY Times now advocates for a Touch-Screen Voting ban

Posted on September 6, 2007 | Leave a comment

Quoting the New York Times (care of the Brad blog):

It is unfortunate that the bill does not contain a provision banning the use of touch-screen voting machines. A touch-screen ban would encourage states to use optical scan machines, which rely on paper ballots read by a computer, like a standardized test form. Optical scans are less expensive and less vulnerable to vote theft.

There is still time before the bill becomes law to add a ban on touch-screen voting. If the House fails to do so, the Senate should, and it should fight for it to be in the final bill.

There has been a spirited debate about how quickly to require reforms to be implemented. There have been calls for putting a solution off until 2012. That is too long to wait.

HR811 coming up for a vote

Posted on September 6, 2007 | 2 comments

A good summary from Ed Felten’s Freedom to Tinker blog:

H.R. 811, the e-voting bill originally introduced by Rep. Rush Holt, is reportedly up for a vote of the full House of Representatives tomorrow.
…
H.R. 811 gets the big issues right, requiring a voter-verified paper ballot with post-election audits to verify that the electronic records are consistent with the paper ballots.

The bill is cautious where caution is warranted. For example, it gives states and counties the flexibility to choose optical-scan or touch-screen systems (or others), as long as there is a suitable voter-verified paper record. Though some e-voting activists want to ban touch-screens altogether, I think that would be a mistake. Touch screens, if done correctly — which no vendor has managed yet, I’ll admit — do offer some advantages.

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Posted in EFF, electronic_frontier_foundation, HR811, legislation, news, votingmachines