BILL TO BAN DRE (TOUCH-SCREEN) VOTING FINALLY INTRODUCED IN SENATE

Source: BRAD BLOG



BILL TO BAN DRE (TOUCH-SCREEN) VOTING MACHINES FINALLY INTRODUCED IN SENATE!
Nelson and Co-Sponsor Whitehouse Rewrite Originally Introduced Bill to Do Away with Discredited Systems by 2012 and 'Any Subsequent Year'

-- By Brad Friedman

After months of being told over and over by Rep. Rush Holt's (D-NJ) office, People for the American Way (PFAW) and many of the other most ardent supporters of Holt's flawed Election Reform Bill (HR811) that "there is no support in Congress for a ban on DREs", it looks like they must have been wrong. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and co-sponsor Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) filed such a bill today.

Here's the complete bill which we've yet to read in full. But note this item from page 41, Line 7:

RESTRICTION ON USE OF DIRECT RECORDING ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEMS -
A direct recording electronic voting system may not be used to administer any election for Federal office held in 2012 or any subsequent year.

A ban on such machines, finally? Yes! By 2012? Unfortunately, yes. But let's overlook that last point for a moment to look at the bigger, and more important picture...

COMPLETE STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5238



Read more: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5238

I have followed the Voting Machine issue since the old DU days when Bev first arrived ....

This is EXTREMELY important .... Congrats to Nelson and Whitehouse for this long awaited legislation ...

I am still of the mind to use Touch Screens, but ONLY to create and print ballots, utilizing the same user interfaces for disabled`voters that were the presumed reason to switch to DRE systems ....... They can HAND COUNT the ballots ..... Using Touch Screens to create ballots is NOT a fraud threat ....

If you're unfamiliar with the studies, you should probably give them a look. No time to go get 'em now but...

a) MIT/Caltech found that over 80% of voters don't check their "paper trails" (as you'd have with a touch-screen Ballot Marking Device).

b) Rice University found that two-thirds of voters don't notice vote-flips in front of their face on a touch-screen machine, much less on the little paper that's printed with it.

c) Brennan Center showed exactly how to hack those machines in such a way that you could flip an election and no audit, not even 100% manual audit, would be able to find the hack.

Oh...and they also break down. When they do, voters can't vote. Unlike with paper ballot systems.

And one more for ya...there is no way that I can look at those ballots and know that they represent the voter intent. None. Nada. Can't happen.

Sorry. And with all due respect.

Because that's what we're stuck with for 2008. If the original Holt bill from this year had passed, it would have effectively banned DREs because there wasn't the technology to meet the reqs. That would have been for 08, not 12.

Yes, it's better to have no paper at all.

Why? Because if you have paper trails, you can count 100% of them by hand and believe you know who won the election, even though that paper could have been gamed as easily as the numbers inside the machine. (As Brennan Center has shown, as CA SoS Debra Bowen has shown, etc.)

At least without paper, you know what you don't know.

When you have a "paper trail" on a DRE, you think you know how folks counted, if you are allowed to count that paper trail (which is no easy feat either, btw). Even though you don't and won't.

We know what we don't know, alright. We don't know who is actually winning elections and won't in 08.

I know it's a total waste of time to try to convince those who have made up their minds that it's all or nothing. I've tried for months and it goes both ways. I'm not going to be convinced that paperless voting in elections is better than elections with some paper where we're forced to use DREs because they are already installed in states across the country. I see this as a difference in understanding, in knowledge, in tactics and strategies. But those who vilify activists like myself, don't see this as tactical, they accuse us of being somehow corrupt. That is sick and sad. And to "win" their way, they have gone after Holt, activists, and activist groups like VoteTrustUSA with a vengeance that should be directed at all the rotten election officials, vendors, and legislators who keep systems for unverifiable voting intact.

Of course DREs make poor "paper trail" printers. We all know that. Ironically, back in 2004 when Dodd, Ney, Hoyer and McConnell wrote the infamous "Dear Colleagues" letter, they said: "The proposals mandating a voter-verified paper record would essentially take the most advanced generations of election technologies and systems available and reduce them to little more than ballot printers." That's the last thing they and the vendors wanted. If the machines are reduced to being glorified printers, how could any state justify buying them? So getting paper put on the machines was actually a tactic getting rid of them.

The argument within the ER community always boils down those who think it's better to have no paper to audit until DREs are banned. The problem is that some of us have real concerns that there may not be anything left of our democracy to get them banned if we don't have any way to verify elections until then. How does that happen if we don't have legislators who have the will and the power to do it? For this window in time we had some Democrats with some power. I don't know any activist who supported HR811 who wouldn't love to have all the DREs in the country taken to the desert Burning Man and left as a monument to all that is the worst in human nature.

Will we have any power to get rid of DREs after the 08 election if we have no way to verify the vote in that election, no threat to the vendors that we have at least some forensic evidence of what actually happened to the votes via their proprietary software? Without any mandate for paper and/or audits on already existing DRE voting systems across the country, we are toothless tigers.

Then there are those who think it's better to have no improvements in the language in HAVA thinking somehow it's going to magically disappear so it's better not to amend it, and those who think it's better to amend it as much as possible when possible. This doesn't mean I ever supported the Feinstein bill, which would have amended HAVA in ways that were so shockingly bad it boggled the mind. Californians should throw her out of office, if they could. But that's another topic.

I've spent hours, days, months trying to audit elections from paperless DREs. That time on the battlefront convinced me that we have to have evidence, even if it's not perfect evidence, and that's the only way to break the back of the ruthless vendors and those who keep the machines in our elections. It is dangerous to the vendors for us to have any physical evidence to compare with the electronic counts in elections.

Also in the orig HR811, the infamous toilet paper roll was banned, and signs would have to be displayed to tell people to look at the paper trails. I'm totally on board with eliminating DREs from elections, but my experience made me see this not as an all or nothing battle, as if winning at Normandy would have won WWII, but establishing beach heads. That's strategy and tactics. Who is right, who is wrong? Actually groups having different strategies could be a good thing if some people didn't view others as "competition" that they have to eliminate.

I'd wager that those who are on the side of no change and no evidence are not those who have their closets and basements full of accumulator tapes, their computers full of spreadsheets, and their files stacked with open record requests, who actually know what it's like to try to audit elections without any physical evidence beyond what the vendors and current law allows, things like DRE ballots cast numbers and tapes that spit out the numbers that are totally unverifiable.

And that's the point. If you are using a DRE -- with or without a paper trail -- you already hae no way to "verify an election until then".

Your comments make my point. You THINK you will have a way to verify an election if there is a "paper trail" on the DRE. But you won't.

And, as a matter of fact, as several well-known voting machine experts (computer scientists and security experts) have confirmed to me, "paper trails" on the ES&S iVotronic's in FL-13's race would likely only have meant the case was thrown out of court sooner, rather than later. Why? Because we still would have had 18,000 "missing" votes, but it would have been verified and confirmed on the "paper trails" you are fighting so hard for. And thus, the challenge would have been immediately dismissed. How can you challenge it? The "paper trails" confirmed that 18,000 voters "chose" not to vote in the race, after all!



You wouldn't have any power with Holt/Nelson (as currently written either), but you continue to fool yourself in the same way many chose to fool themselves when HAVA was being passed in 2002.

Also in the orig HR811, the infamous toilet paper roll was banned, and signs would have to be displayed to tell people to look at the paper trails.

^^^Lack of letters and punctuation = ran out of space

Do you trust ATMs to give you your money and not to someone else? They're made by the same companies that build the voting machines. Here in Nevada, slot and poker machines et al are proprietary, but they are not exempt from the stringent regulatory oversight of the Nevada Gaming Commission. If a machine doesn't pass certain technical standards, it doesn't get to leave the warehouse floor until it does pass. It isn't the machines that steal votes, it's the code written by people who are allowed to work with impunity without any kind of transparent public oversight. I just don't understand why the FEC or some other public agency can't take on a role similar to what the Nevada Gaming Commission does to ensure the integrity of voting machines.

WHY TOUCH SCREEN VOTING MACHINES ARE NOT LIKE ATMS


ATM software is open, but voting software is proprietary

Banks insist that all code in ATMs be fully disclosed to them and they won't trust their money or their depositors’ money with anything less. Voting software by comparison is considered proprietary. Companies that make both ATMs and voting machines proudly boast of their open source software for ATMs in their advertising. This situation could conceivably be changed by demanding that voting software also be fully disclosed, but there are other reasons why open source code is not by itself sufficient to make voting machines like ATMs. For example, it would be necessary to match the code on all voting machines to verify its identity with the true open source master code immediately prior to each election. But even then, any diskette or other similar device could introduce a virus or other malware that deletes itself. Furthermore, human beings can not observe the vote counting even in open source environments.

In addition, there is the problem that pen source code itself is not necessarily "knowable". One can think of the law as being open source "code", free of copyright and at least in theory available to all in free libraries. However, like the extensive areas of code in computer programs that often have unknown functions or utility, even a lawyer who spends his life studying the law doesn't understand how every bit of the "open source" law works, nor can we the people realistically understand even a fraction of exactly how the open source code for voting machines would work. Even with open source code, then, we would be required to accept election results on trust or faith, which is the opposite of checks and balances.

Were the code of the voting machine vendors suddenly opened up or disclosed, it would take a long time to understand it, we may in fact never understand it, and those who do understand will only be a handful of experts with a lot of time on their hands, probably paid by the government or a vendor and not loyal solely to the public.

Individual ATM transactions can be tracked, but individual secret ballots cannot be tracked

Every transaction in an ATM is completely tracked with redundant account numbers traceable to the account holder, and your transaction is photographed or videotaped for security purposes. In contrast, a secret ballot cannot possibly be associated with such an identifying number and still remain secret. The very secrecy of the ballot creates a virtually untraceable system that is wide open to both fraud and the cover-up of material irregularities. It is not feasible to provide a receipt in elections to prove a transaction because of concerns about using it to sell votes, though this concern might be addressed by making verification available only to the voter in secure locations like the elections offices.

To make ATM banking perfectly analogous to the process of voting, you'd have to have every account holder at a bank make a non-traceable (secret ballot) cash deposit on the same day (election day) by dropping this anonymous deposit (ballot) into a large bin (ballot box). Bank officers would then calculate the total amount of money deposited in secret with no public oversight, but not start counting until after the bank (polls) close. The account holders (the voting public) would then come back at the closing of the business day (election night) with the media in tow demanding instantly reliable bank balances and overall account results within minutes or hours of the closing of the bank (polls). Bankers (election officials) would insist along with some in the media that the convenience of speedy results was far more important than accuracy in one's bank account (election results).

The insane rush to count the bank deposits (ballots) within minutes or hours on election night would them be used as a primary argument for making the banking deposits invisible and unverifiable by converting them to electrons, so that they could be processed all the more quickly and conveniently. Hopefully it is obvious that in such elections we would be putting intense pressure on a very fragile and inherently unauditable system. In contrast, public and auditable systems can work only at deliberate, and visible, speed.

ATM errors typically have no consequences for users because they are correctable, but ballot tabulation errors have very serious consequences that are usually not correctable

With banks, you have at least 60 days after receiving your statement, if not much longer, to contest and challenge the transactions involving your account. With voting, there is no possibility at all of correcting your vote after you leave the polling place. In fact, voters are considered legally incompetent to contest their ballots with extrinsic evidence under stringent anti-challenge provisions. Election contest laws are subject to extremely short statutes of limitation such as ten days. At any rate, you couldn't locate your own specific ballot for purposes of challenging its tabulation, and some elections officials have preemptively cited academic research purporting to suggest that significant numbers of voters "don't accurately remember their own votes" after having voted, in order to cast doubt on members of the public who may wish to question the tabulation of their own votes. Thus, nothing is allowed to impeach or contest the rushed count, not even the voters themselves were they somehow able to show their own ballots counted incorrectly.

Broken touch screen voting machines have disenfranchised many, many people who have had to get back to work or school before a functioning one could be made available to them during limited voting hours. A broken ATM just means that you have to go to another bank branch or supermarket, at any hour of the day or night. In the case of voting, touch screen machines are expensive bottlenecks where you may be forced to stay in a long line at only one polling place. You usually cannot go elsewhere to cast your vote, though in some states a provisional ballot may be allowable.

In summary, you vote untraceably (assuming that you aren’t turned away unable to access a functioning machine, or by long lines), you're not allowed to challenge or change even your own vote, you're not trusted to remember it, and then the elections officials refuse to disclose their data (ballots) or their analysis methods (counting software) on the grounds of trade secrecy, only releasing their conclusions (election results).

Such a system has absolutely none of the safeguards built into ATMs, which have quadruple redundancy. If you take out $100, you can count the five crisp $20s, check the receipt, cross-reference it with your bank statement listing individual transactions tagged with unique numbers, and if necessary, request the photo of you making the transaction.

ATMs have extensive real world testing that vote counting systems can never have

Principles of elementary systems analysis dictate that any complex system, whether mechanical or electronic, is highly unlikely to ever be free of bugs. Such systems can, however, eventually be made robust and reliable by banging them against reality hard and often. ATMs are part of a complex system that has had most of the bugs worked out of it by being constantly tested in the real world, billions of times an hour, 24/7, 365 days a year. Even so, they still malfunction occasionally, though if you run into one that isn’t working it’s usually only a minor hassle to find another one.

In contrast, voting is something we do a couple of times a year, and letting machines with complex hardware and software do it for us means that elections must inevitably always be a beta test. This is why you rarely hear of ATMs that don’t work because of heat or cold or humidity, but commonly hear of voting machine breakdowns for those reasons and many others. If we only drove our cars for a couple of hours once a year, they'd suck pretty badly too. Beta test mode is absolutely unacceptable for something as important as voting.

Moreover, even if billions were spent on ATMs, there is no conceivable way that we would all be able to use an ATM in the same 14 hour time period, even under completely optimal and bug-free conditions. Forcing voters to use electronic voting machines means forcing them to stand in long lines instead of the five minute service guarantees we are used to in stores. The "promised land" of electronic voting promises only convenience for election officials, inherent invisibility of mistakes (which appeals to both vendors and election officials), and replicates the situation we now have with school systems whereby rich districts get great service and poor districts get poor service. The ultimate effect of electronic voting is therefore structural disenfracnhisement of the poor by the forced bottlenecks of expensive machines.

We can safely entrust others with tracking ATM transactions, but we can only trust ourselves to supervise vote tabulation

The current situation is this. We now have no basis for confidence in election results because the data and the method of its analysis are never disclosed—only conclusions (election results) are disclosed. Voters are considered legally incompetent to change or challenge their votes, or even to recall what those votes were. Voters are widely considered by elections officials to be the cause of machine malfunctions themselves, resulting in delayed responses to fix them. Furthermore, the poll workers are not supposed to observe the voters and therefore can't easily verify whether a given problem is a machine problem or a voter problem. (Would any self-respecting software engineers refuse to include an undo function in their word-processing program, and then blame users for not being smart enough to avoid mistakes 100% of the time? Most “user” error is really system design error—real world testing should result in errors being hard to make and easy to recover from.)

We need to fight for democracy here in our time, meaning that the government must serve the public, which is the ultimate source of political power, and not the other way around. Public "servants" should not seek their own convenience and insulation from accountability for mistakes, but should instead be rewarded for falling on their swords and reporting problems voluntarily and immediately.

We the People must insist on vote counting methods that are transparent and public, that have robust checks and balances, and that keep fully in mind the very unique features of elections that make them not analogous to much of anything else. Thomas Jefferson anticipated every generation would need a revolution in democratic values to remember the inalienable rights of We the People and assert them against government officials who (quite naturally and even understandably) believe that their full time specialist status entitles them to special rights, because that is the route to something other than democracy, something other than We the People being in charge.

Please feel free to show us where it is written, either in the Constitution, US law, the Bible, or in a Where's Waldo book, that we cannot conduct a major overhaul and REQUIRE that tabulation software and the machines themselves be standardized, publicly transparent, and regulated a bit like we do here in Nevada for the gaming industry. I can't read computer code for shit, but I trust both ATMs and slot machines to not cheat me out of my money.* Why? Because there's oversight. Accidents and errors happen with ATMs and slot machines, but I have full confidence that there's no illegal activity involved because of that oversight. You seem to blithely ignore my reference to Nevada's gaming industry regulatory oversight, as well that I didn't say ATMs are THE SAME as vote machines, just that they are built by the VERY SAME COMPANIES. I also find it funny that you bring up "vote counting methods that are transparent and public" after having tried to dismiss my post, which was about having public and transparent oversight.

*In the case of slot machines, not brazenly so; they're gambling machines after all and the casinos want to attract people so they have to make their machines be a bit loose while still turning a profit.

--back and forth between end users and hardware and software designers. Same for complex programs like Microsoft Office and Open Office. That, in addition to oversight, is what would be necessary to make DREs trustworthy. It is inherent in the very existence of the secret ballot that ongoing feedback between voters and programmers is flat out NOT POSSIBLE, ever! Not to mention the problem that voting, unlike gambling and ATM use, occurs very infrequently. You'd expect cars to suck if they were never driven except for a few hours twice a year, no?

The same basic problem exists for optical scanning of course, with the extremely important difference that an actual paper ballot is produced, which can be understood and corrected directly by the voter, and which can be independently audited.

Also, I don't conflate touchscreens with DRE. There is no reason why touchscreen interfaces for the disabled can't be used to print out a paper ballot identical to the ballots that are used by everyone else, and tabulated separately.

Public regulation like the gaming industry does is of course also essential.

One is submitting a ballot of your vote that is counted centrally someplace else along with many other "secret" votes.

For DRE's:
1) There is more than one entity involved that is contributing data to the process (aka multiple voters).
2) There is a requirement that collectively the whole cannot see how each individual voted (secret ballot).
3) There is someone ELSE that is tasked with overseeing that these votes are all counted correctly.

For ATM's:
1) There really is just one entity that is being measured in terms both incoming and outgoing transactions. The individual doesn't CARE about what happens financially to other folks using ATMs other than those he/she's paying to or receiving payments from.
2) Both payer and receiver know EXACTLY how much each of them should pay or receive or the rules that are used when things like currency conversions are used in the process. No secrecy on one party or the other is needed in these cases.
3) The individual using an ATM has COMPLETE ability to oversee THEMSELVES whether their bank balance is correct or not. If they see a mysterious charge that they've not made, they can recognize that its not valid and complain to the bank about it. They might not complain if they get "extra" deposits to themselves, but someone else who's paying that money incorrectly (either the bank itself or another individual) will complain or have the means to detect that they've lost money incorrectly and the system can correct itself there too. By contrast voter has NO way of verifying how their vote was being counted. He/she is relying trusting on other oversight to ensure that his vote is being counted. Oversight in the case of banks is just to make sure the process is working properly so that the system isn't really abused. The bank customer still has COMPLETE ability to oversee their transactions themselves.

Many would say that due to the secrecy requirements, and therefore no possibility of TRUE oversight by the voter on whether their vote was counted or not makes it a requirement that a paper ballot exist that they could point to again, if needed, to say, "Yes, that's my vote" if that level of a recount was needed. With electronic voting machines, there's really no way for that third party oversight (which is the only real oversight since the voter can't do so) to be completely made so that they can't either a) influence the vote count fraudulently, or b) not be in complete power to detect when other abuse of votes happens, when the ballots are secret and he/she doesn't know how each voter has voted themselves.

Let's get back to why we had even talked about voting machines after the 2000 election (and I was one of them at the time). It was to help prevent problems with the ballots being inaccurate due to mechanical flaws the way people "punched" cards, etc. There really was NO mandate that they had to be electronically submitted directly from these machines. One can say that it might make things more efficient, but it takes completely away the integrity of the process. We should have voting machines JUST to print out paper ballots in a verifiable fashion, which allows different language voting, handicapped voting, and prevents voter error, but still provides a means for the voter to verify what card is being used for the record in the count. We can solve the problems associated with the 2000 election by such machines and don't NEED at all those machines to directly send information to tabulating machines.

Can we ever solve the problems to allow for direct electronic submission of votes to a central tabulator, etc.? As Brad notes here, I think the consensus by experts is that given the current technology as we know it, it's not really possible to exclude problems for what we have now. Before we even think about putting such machines in place, there needs to be an extensive review process and consensus support from the voting public and these experts before such technologies are even considered. Public source code will help and should probably be a part of any ultimate solution that's presented, but even there many feel it can be abused.

There is actually some very disturbing and telling information to the contrary. A Dan Rather report sponsored by HDNET (http://www.hd.net/drr227.html) indicates that there are significant issues with voting machines...AND not all are made in the US, which effectively allows the companies (one of which is notably Teletech, A company with government contracts and connections)to circumvent certain undesirable (to Teletech) laws and quality checks.

Interestingly enough, Teletech also has been known to push for sweat-shop-like work environments in their other business ventures...such as the outsourced customer service to Nextel/Sprint they provide.
(There is class action lawsuit against Teletech for these practices within the US)

What struck me as particularly scandalous about that report was the evidence that the elections supply company may have deliberately printed the Florida hanging chad ballots on inferior paper which was prone to creating the chad problem. The goal was to get the counties to upgrade to their "more reliable" (and profitable) electronic systems and off the less expensive mechanical ones.

Imagine that. . . a company deliberately degrading one of their own products so that you can convince government officials it's time to upgrade to a new one.


And then there was the part where the touch screens were outsourced to sweatshops overseas that weren't calibrating them properly. If you touched one part of the screen it registered slightly below or above it. Sound familiar? The company got busted but they then got another government contract shortly after to fill more states with the same kinds of machines.

The point is -- no matter who writes the programs -- there is always the threat of their being hackable.

Meanwhile, using Las Vegas as an example of what's happening with out elections may be appropro - !!

other means.

According to the Justice Department, thieves and robbers made off with $45 million in paper money in 2003. But get this....according to the American Banking Association, computer thieves made off with $500 million in digital cash that same year.’ "

Explain to me again how DREs should be as safe as ATMs?



“The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery...” Thomas Paine

“He who casts the vote decides nothing. He who counts the vote decides everything." Stalin


Edit to say "K & R" -- this is the MOST IMPORTANT issue of all!

We just had an incident where my check cashing card was DUPLICATED and used in California --
we're in NJ ---

We were notified one morning last week by a Visa Fraud rep --

There's no actual "live person" approving your purchases/debits --
so they began by refusing the attempts, but then approved them over maybe a 36 hour period
before they understood what was happening!!!

In all, I think they hit the bank for $1,800 --

My thoughts went back to a Citgo gas station I stopped at one day . . . .

but now we are actually suspicious of a purchase I made at our local Stop 'n Shop where the charge has not yet come thru on our records . . . ???

So -- the idea that we can trust anything wholly -- or computers, especially --
is something we have to wake up from.

My ideal situation would be a COPY of every vote going to the Jimmy Carter/United Nations --
so we'd have a second count -- and why not ??????

Shouldn't we have a second count???

and verifiable. Electronic voting can never be transparent. It isn't a system suited to the elections environment for many reasons.

First, the disclaimer: Like all of you, I don't trust eVote machines as they currently are. These companies are owned by Republicans or are otherwise major campaign contributors to them. There's no transparent public oversight (how many times do I have to repeat that?) of them or their eVote machines and as such no reason to believe there ISN'T election fraud occurring within those machines. It took me a few months, but I came to realize by mid-'01 that the 2000 election had been stolen. 2004 was just more of the same theft. One CEO of one of those companies promising to "deliver Ohio to the President..." comes to mind.



Now on to my rant:
There's been continual and willful ignorance of my bringing up Nevada's successful gaming industry model. There's been continual and willful ignorance of my repeated mentions of transparent public oversight of eVoting. There's been continual and willful dwelling on ATMs and make it out as if I said they are the same as DREs. Clearly they are not as ATMs are subject to independant verification while current eVote machines are not as I've already mentioned. Besides, I CLEARLY stated that both kinds of machines are made by the same companies. Obviously, they can apply similar technologies to both, that was my point. There's been continual and willful ignorance of my pointing out that there's nothing preventing us from writing into law requirements that eVote machines conform to universal standards and submit to transparent public oversight. These scientists and other groups have been reviewing existing systems and shock of shocks finding that they're shoddy and hackable, all because there are no universal standards and no transparent public oversight. And no where have I said to leave it a papertrail-less system. When Nevada acted on the HAVA, here in Washoe County we'd already been using optical scan ballots for years. It worked just fine AND it had a verifiable papertrail (though like any paper ballot someone could simply alter marks or "stuff the ballot box" ... but don't let THAT fact stop any of you from dry humping the nearest ream of paper ballots you see), but oh no no we weren't allowed to stay with that system (oddly enough, I've heard that some parts of the country actually switched TO this system while we switched away, go figure). AikidoSoul, you're about the only person I've ever seen point out the optical scan system; thank you, at least I get that much out of this eVote-haters group. Anyway, there was a meeting here in Reno where the eVote machine producers tried to sell their products to the public and then-Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller (Republican). They tried to whine about the difficulty of adding paper receipt printers to provide some sort of papertrail. The public wasn't having any of THAT bullshit and quickly slapped down that lie. Heller was amused and actually listened to the public's continued input that meeting. I forget who he settled on (ES&S?), but each machine I've used prints a receipt to allow overview of votes cast before final submittal into the "ballot box." I still don't entirely trust that my vote is being counted correctly since it's the secret electric box with no oversight that gets counted, but that has more to do with the fact that, again, there's no transparent public oversight of the coding.

People keep going round and round in circles on this notion that the software we have is the software we're stuck with and the eVote machines we have are the eVote machines we're stuck with. Again I bring up Nevada's gaming industry model: New software is written all the time, new machines are built all the time and yet the system continues to work ... because of oversight. The gaming industry has to meet certain security standards in a given product or else that product does not get approved to leave a warehouse. Also, where is it written that an eVoting machines absolutely positively must have an externally-placed or even wireless connections to the outside world or the Internet? What prevents us from building a machine that has just a physical connection port that is inside the sealed machine, that you have to physically open the machine and draw attention to yourself as you try to access it? Or what about a removable hard drive instead? Paper ballot boxes have to be physically moved and there's a chain of custody for that. How is there any difference between manhandling a paper ballot box, anywhere from the polling booth to the storage facility and doing the same with a hard drive? What prevents us from having a multiple vetting system in place to ensure there isn't any monkey business with the machines, either physically or electronically? Trajan pointed out the multiple vetting needed in aerospace projects. Don't we already have those kinds of multiple safeguards for what paper ballot systems remain? Again, you people go round and round this notion that we're stuck with the secret black box system currently being inflicted upon us and we can't mandate a better eVoting system, that there's no room for improvement and the only option is to go backward and prevent any further attempts to go forward. We can do better.

I don't trust Diebold, Sequoia, or ES&S to protect my vote, but neither do I entirely trust eVote-haters to do what's best for our democracy on this matter. I know you all mean well and I certainly appreciate all you've done to try to keep 'em honest, but your collective technophobia isn't much of a step up from those companies' eagerness to screw us all. Paper ballots aren't the end all you make them out to be any more than the electrons whizzing about in a machine. They are susceptible to monkey business same as anything else. The media upon which we cast our ballots isn't the problem, the people who make and count them are. I'm not afraid of eVote machines, I'm afraid of people who build them without anyone looking over their shoulder and of people who are afraid of eVote machines, regardless of how they're built. And yes Brad, I have spent time researching. I may not have as much in-depth knowledge as you or others, but by the same token I'm not going to take everything you or others say about it as gospel. Just as there are a million ways to screw with electronic systems, there are a million ways to protect them too. It's nice to see at least some, like Trajan, likewise aren't completely toeing the line you and others have drawn in the sand. He doesn't like nor want them, but he doesn't see them as Satan-spawn either, just unnecessary.

HOWEVER, without even imagining how much more sophisticated the steals can get .....
the votes can be stolen over telephone wires, for one ---

Looking for ways to stop steals would be like looking for Iraq's WMD ---

We need paper ballots and hand counting ---

and probably a DUPLICATE count --

but most of all we need verification over speed.

We trust machines as part of our daily lives. I fail to see how this is any different. Yes, the program needs serious changes (confirmation of votes, paper trail, etc.) but the idea itself is not a bad one.

Even something comparatively simple like a laboratory scale, which rarely malfunctions, must be tested with standard weights daily. If you don't do it, your analytical lab loses its accreditation.

The reason you can trust my lab results is that I never trust my machines, even though they work right most of the time. I turn in a set of hand calculations with every sample set, just to check on whether the software is corrupted.

We will never, EVER be able to write a law that requires that voting software be subject to regulatory public oversight. Nope, just CAN'T be done. Better to just ban the whole kit and kaboodle.

Funny how you've dismissed both of our posts, but at the same time you're rejecting the very notion that agencies like the EPA or FDA or FEC or SEC or any number of other public entities are capable of regulating anything at a national level, in this case the FEC or other relevant body standing watch over a voting system that utilizes touchscreen voting machines. You're conflating a type of human-computer interface with proprietary and secretive computer code. There is no reason on God's green Earth that a touchscreen voting machine can't be built that utilizes vote tabulation software that is regulated to ensure no "special coding" is included to switch votes etc. Moreover, they can be built to protect against both physical external to get in (ie physically break into the machine) as well as electronic means (ie hacking in via Internet connection, physical and/or wireless). Nevada's Gaming Commission specifically addresses those issues in their regulations. Where is it written that the same cannot be done for voting machines?

have you noticed who is incharge of hiring practices in the past 6 years? Have you been paying attention?
Sure a more-secure voting system can be constructed.. look at NZ's open source solution. However we both know that's not going to happen, it will be the same "experts" who got us here that will make the next "secure" generation of machines.

Better to just mandate hand-counted paper ballots where hand-recounts are possible.

Here is a recount on an electronic voting machine:
Select * from voter_reg; <-- How often does a query return different results on the same data?

DRoseDARs said:



No reason, except that every legitimate computer scientist and security expert has found it can't be done. Or if it can, it can't be done in a way that is transparent to the voter and to auditors.

If you can prove to me that ANY vote EVER counted on ANY DRE system has been counted accurately, just let me know. You can't.

Regulating the software has nothing to do with it.

It would seem you haven't spent much time researching this issue.

I must respectfully disagree ....

Software CAN be written that is reliable and safe, if written IN THE OPEN, and then hardcoded into machines that are then reliably sealed against tampering ....

Chain of custody is a critical element here, and controlling, impounding and verifying such machines CAN be done effectively, if that is so desired ....

Knowing this; I have been asked here : "What is so bad about hand counting ? .... So it take's hours to complete : DONT we have time enough for an honest election?"

Yes we do ..... We CAN wait for hand counts ...... If there is any question: Count it again .... The ballots are RIGHT THERE for the counting (Unless you are a Supreme Court Justice, who apparently despise counting ballots) ....

Furthermore: the Touch Screen hardware neednt be tossed out, but can be converted into Ballot Printing Machines ..... This would assure that disabled persons would have the access that was so crucial to the arguments for DRE during the HAVA push ....

Separate Touch Screens from counting ... and HAND COUNT (No matter how long it takes), and you have got one safe and secure voting system ....

Trajan said:



Cool. How are you going to demonstrate that the software is "reliable and safe" to my 80 year old grandmother? Or does she not deserve to have confidence in her democracy?

Further, how am I going to be able to know that the vote as counted, was as you had intended with such a machine? (HINT: Can't be done)

Finally, nobody is arguing against touch-screen usages, as distinct from DREs, if necessary for disabled voters who *choose* to use them. But for the majority of the voting populace, it's insane to use Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) for a whole host a reasons. If only because voters can't vote if the power is out or the machines go down!

She is going to have to take YOUR word, the word of a trusted family member or friend .... One whom she might, for example, trust with making her rice pudding after dinner ....

To Wit: You neglected to include how the software design would occur "IN THE OPEN", I.E. NOT in secret ... with LOTS of people watching throughout the design and testing process ..... Including representatives from ALL interested parties (Including YOU, for instance) .... Once a design is finalized and coded: All checksum and CRC components can be obtained prior to impound ....

Subsequently; each identical machine would be loaded with the SAME type PROM chips loaded with the SAME SW that reads the SAME checksum and processes the SAME CRC value as that which was impounded and maintained.

I have worked on different aerospace projects where SW Controls were paramount to success and were built into the system at design .... Lives were at stake, and you cannot afford to allow the wrong sw to be loaded ..... SW Impound, Chain Of Custody, Tamper proofing, Checksum and CRC verification were ALL required .... If ANYTHING 'fell out', you didn't fly ....

Anyways ... so as to NOT belabor the point : I would cede (as I already noted) that DRE's are unnecessary ..... Hand counting doesnt take so damned long ......

Let me also add that I appreciate your leadership on this issue Brad ..... Little disagreements like this are conceptual, and do not detract from the fact that I personally am glad you are on this like you have been - Thanks ....

She's not gonna take MY word for it, because I don't know if that code that was used and (supposedly) compiled for use on the voting machines works either! So whose word am I gonna take? Some supposed expert computer scientist? Why should I have to trust them (and, btw, if you follow this sordid tale, you'll know that there are many supposed "experts" out there, who should not be trusted for anything...Michael Shamos, Paul Craft, John Gardner, etc. Except they are allowed to be "experts" verifying these hackable for states across the country!)



You forget that with each of those software designs, ballot programming is added to it. Which similarly may or may not be accurate and work properly with the compiled source code (on the premise that we have come to TRUST some expert/genius scientist to catch any problems).

Beyond such errors or purposeful gaming, there is also the matter of giving the right ballot to the right voter on such machines. Here's just one story from today's paper where voters contend they were given the wrong ballot, and of course, with such machines, there's no real way to prove it one way or another: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/11/02/1102westlake.html

Unfortunately, that sort of thing happens all the time with DREs (and/or BMDs) and nobody knows, unfortunately, how many times it happens.

Furthermore, are you going to perform firmware and bios tests on every single machine as well before every election when the software is compiled and supposedly put onto the machine and checksumed etc? As is, Registrars in CA who are supposed to do L&A tests on every machine before every election do barely a fraction of those tests, because they claim -- as in a recent San Diego incident -- that they wouldn't have time to hold the election if they did.

Of THOUSANDS of DREs used in San Diego's election in Nov. of 2006, only 20 were L&A tested because there was simply no time (the RoV claimed) to test all thousand or two of 'em.



Were there dozens of them at thousands of locations which changed every couple of months, and included secrecy so there was no real way to verify if they were actually working on the other end? (the pitfalls of a secret ballot) Somehow I doubt it.

Also, as you may know, government military and commercial aerospace projects are generally allotted a few more bucks (and have FAR more controls in place) than election systems.



I might say "my pleasure" where it somewhat more pleasureful actually :-)

And with that, I appreciate the thought you've put into this, the important sober debate/discussion you're willing to have, as well as for the kind words. Wish there were many more like ya out there!

results taken by computer cannot be tamper proof, whereas physical ballots can be a absolute re-countable proof.

They cannot be made to be secure -- it is next to impossible for many reasons.

Computers are much too easy to tamper with -- and tampering can occur several times before, during and after the votes are cast. It does not have to be a physical tampering that you can see, but embedded in the firmware or software.

Many computer scientists have worked on this problem of voting DRE security for several years. One of the best -- Avi Rubin has stated clearly that there is no way to make computers safe from vote theft.

He recommends optical scan because there is solid evidence of the vote, they are cheap, easy to use, and the public is used to them.

The potential SCALE of the theft with DREs is HUGE, compared with the penny ante theft of a few optical scan ballots here and there -- which can be stolen by both Repugs and Dems.

Repug owned voting machines, software, and support firms -- makes the potential for thievery from Repugs only -- an unequal thievery, if you will.

Computers with paper receipts are not the answer. With computers, you can have a print out of the vote but that guarantees ZERO. It could be a printout of the candidate you voted for, but the computer can do the actual tally for the other candidates..

Recounts are unlikely. Rules about hand counting ballots are extremely difficult in most states. In Florida, you have to lose by 1/2 of 1% before it is legal for you to request a hand count. If you're the thief -- you steal it ABOVE the 1/2 of 1 % to avoid the recount.

Counts from computers cannot be verified --- You can't see electrons.

I've been the CEO of a computer services company for more than ten years and know this topic. I've communicated with most of the top computer scientists on this issue for years... and they are not stupid about the reasons why computers can't be trusted for this purpose.

The U.S. Treasury is the biggest bank in the world -- the thieves know how to steal better than any of us. Why give them access by allowing them total control the outcome with proprietary systems and software? They have made the voting system process TOTALLY BLIND to the public.

Even the firmware can be setup to steal the votes. The scientists who have tried to examine the machines have written that each time forensics are conducted, that the machines and software AUTOMATICALLY DESTROY THE EVIDENCE!

My senior tech can write a simple batch file program that can perform a task and then disappear itself as soon as the job is completed. The program can then reactivate itself at a given time. A similar program can be written to change the vote, disappear, and then reappear in two years when the polls open again.

There are thousands of malicious ways to screw with computers --- thousands. We don't have the millions of eyes and ears and time and money and will to "oversee" every DRE in the country. Physical ballots -- paper evidence -- that has nothing to do with electrons, is the best possible choice.

No complex system is ever bug-free, even when it becomes robust and reliable. No complex system can ever be made reliable if it is seldom used, and if there is not constant feedback between users and producers. DREs are much more like missile "defense" (rather than ATMs and slot machines) for that reason--frequent real world testing just can't be done.

Optical scanning is different because the paper ballot is the official record, allowing for real auditing.

WillBowden said:



I suggest you read some of the comments above about the difference between ATMs and DREs. That said, if you can come up with a machine that allow for for successful "confirmation of votes" in such a way that you, the voter, can confirm your vote has *actually* been counted correctly, and then I, the citizen overseer can similarly assure that your vote and mine have all been counted correctly, let me know.

The very best computer scientists, engineers, programmers and security experts have been unable to do so so far. Read my full article.

Yes. The machines (and their lack of any and all transparency, without or without a "paper trail") are indeed the problem.

You'll be shocked, dismayed, and definitely will be anti-DRE if you do (unless you're an election official, Brit Williams, Doug Lewis, work for one of th DRE vendors, or any of their cohorts (not saying you are one of them -- there is a tremendous learning curve before anyone can fully understand the problems with using DREs in elections).

PLEASE, FOLKS . . . wake up to this ---

America has been voting in some part on computers since the late 1960's . . . !!!!

You haven't just had steals in 2000, 2004 and probably in 2006 as far as reducing the Democratic majority --

you've had steals for 25 years -- !!!!!

is by far one of my favorite people in Washington. I am a bit put off by the 2012 timeline tho. With a year left yet before the election I really wish they were pushing for 2008.

There are so few, one can count them on the fingers of one hand--or maybe two.

Choosing that date was utter cynicism. 2008 will determine if we live in a truly free society or not.

Why wast out time with false hopes. We have less than a year to make the changes that will make the difference in determining if every vote is counted and properly tallied.

We need audit-able and traceable paper ballots with a strict chain of custody and severe penalties for violations and a long statute of limitations.

Any software used to count votes and tally ballots must be freely available for audit or open source and certified by independent testers. No 'secret' codes.

made the unreliable/unsecure machines and institute a hand counted paper ballot election. A wait with so much on the line (think environment, corporatism, warS, SCOTUS) is absurd.

Mr Nelson who wouldn't listen to a damn word from anyone in the state of Fla about the dre's for two national elections..Mr Nelson who told all the powers that be in the state to shut us up...Mr Nelson who would not discuss the machines what so ever and mandated no one else in the state discuss them..

this stinks to high heaven folks... that he is in any way involved!

so Bill Nelson "nowwwwww" cares??????? what a joke!

fly

and his wife is on the board of directors of that group.

It doesn't make me wonder at all. He is part of the problem.

who pretends to be a dem..i have had it with him..big time..so when i now see him involved with anything having to do with the voting machine issue..i say beware..beware big time..something stinks...and it stinks badly!!!!!!!!

fly

one of the place his KCIA handlers took him to see was the Arlington 'Fellowship' house.

Compare the membership of the 'Fellowship' with the obstructionist, war mongering, reich-wing members in Congress and the match is amazing.

Clowns like Nelson make me sick... He's such a useful idiot to the right.

what a joke!!

he is solely responsible, in my experience, and my minds eye for Florida getting stuck with DRE's in 2002 and 2004 and having our votes stolen both elections..because the word came down from him to shut us up and shut us down ( those of us fighting the machines in Fla since before 2002!)..

i do not trust this one bit and i don't give a crap who says otherwise!

fly

:patriot: :nuke: :Patriot:

The key provisions of Holt are in the bill - the audit and paper trail rules:

"...electronic tally shall not be used as the exclusive basis for de-termining the official certified vote tally.
RULE FOR CONSIDERATION OF BALLOTS ASSOCIATED WITH EACH VOTING MACHINE.—For purposes of clause (i), only the paper ballots deemed compromised, if any, shall be considered in the calculation of whether or not the result of the election could be changed due to the compromised paper ballots.
...in the event that the unofficial count as described in section 323(a)(1) reveals that the margin of victory between the two candidates receiving the largest number of votes in the election is less than 1 percent of the total votes cast in that election, the hand counts of the voter-verified paper ballots shall occur in at least 10 percent
...greater than or equal to 1 percent but less than 2 percent of the total votes cast in that election, the hand counts of the voter-verified paper ballots shall occur in at least 5 percent

...greater than 2 percent of the total votes cast ..in that election, the hand counts of the voter-verified paper ballots shall occur in at least 3 percent"

.

If Holt had passed we'd now be into conference and preparing for 08 audits - but Brad and others saw "fatal flaws" in Holt - so we will not have audits in 08, and God only knows where this bill is going now that there is no bill coming out of the House. I hope we do have this bill in place for 2012 -but we could have had as much much more easily, and in 08, if Brad and friends had not opposed Holt.

Papau said:




For a start, the Nelson bill (like it, hate it, or not) has '08 audit provisions as Holt did when originally introduced.

Not suggesting I'm supporting the Nelson bill, just pointing out that it's modeled after Holt and would also begin audits in '08.

Had Holt passed, btw, it would not have become law w/out a version in the Senate. So you're imaginary notion that somehow I stopped Holt, and that if it had been passed, there would be audits in '08 is just silly and without basis.

Finally, audits of DRE machines are even worse than useless. "Worse"? Yes. Audit a DRE system where the paper trail has been gamed along with the internal numbers, and you could end up showing DREs to be "100% accurate" even though they had been gamed. In the meantime, the audit of the paper-based op-scan system next to it might (likely) be found as inaccurate.

The result: You've just created ammunition for killing paper-based systems and going to all DREs because they have been found to be "the most accurate" by the standards of the bill you fought for.

Think ahead folks. And be careful what you wish for.

the defeat of Holt and subsequent delay. Indeed in a phone call discussion of our first glance at the bill - my caller and I agreed that the month or more lost in the House meant that the 08 was a fake date and that the sponsor's were aiming for 2010 at best.

We will see if it is real - I hope it is - and there is no doubt that the Senate Bill includes a fix to every problem raised with Holt.

But the game now is to get Feinstein to withdraw her bill in favor of this one (and likewise with any other bill in the Senate to withdraw in favor of this one) and get it passed, then get a bill read, to the floor, and passed in the House, to conference and out, and passed and signed between the end of the Thanksgiving recess and the Xmass recess - because the first due date in the bill is for things to happen by 1/1/08.

It looks to me like a doable but unlikely accomplishment.

You slowed the process down with Holt, and now claim that because the bill says 11/08 start date, that is the date that it will be effective. I assume you have a plan to make it all happen in the shorten period that we now have.

I hope your plan works and you prove me wrong about your killing any 11/08 reform.

Just to restate the facts - I said:

"If Holt had passed we'd now be into conference and preparing for 08 audits - but Brad and others saw "fatal flaws" in Holt - so we will not have audits in 08, and God only knows where this bill is going now that there is no bill coming out of the House. I hope we do have this bill in place for 2012 -but we could have had as much much more easily, and in 08, if Brad and friends had not opposed Holt."

I do not believe this will be in place for 11/08, and I believe the reason will be the killing of Holt. Passing Holt would have been no guarantee of an 11/08 date - but it would have made it much more likely.

I hope your analysis of the time needed to get it passed is better than mine - but we will not have to wait very long to find out.

Papau said:



Not sure which bill *your* reading, but many of the existing problems with Holt are still in Nelson's updated version. Example: Non-disclosure requirements are still built into Nelson's version so that only so-called "experts" may review the software used on voting systems.



You're welcome.



I made no such "claim", nor do I have any such "plan to make it all happen" because as I see it, there are big problems with the Nelson bill as it's currently written. Starting (but not ending) with the fact that DREs will be allowed for '08. Coupled with audits, that could be the death knell for paper based voting systems, as you well know.




Kathy, I have no idea what you're talking about. If you are imagining some "plan" I have for the Nelson bill, your imagination is failing you again. Even if it were passed as is tomorrow, and even if the Holt bill was changed in conference to match it, it would still be a) a dangerous bill and b) not funded unless it's included in the '08 appropriations which are ongoing write now. Otherwise, a supplemental would have to be passed in appropriations to pay for it.

That said, it still has most of the previous failings of the Holt bill which became much worse throughout the compromise/committee process.



Once again, as seems now a regular occurrence with you, Kathy, your imagination is getting the better of you.

If you think my pointing out known fatal flaws in the bill has kept up from having "audits in 08", you must be in even more of a dreamland than I suspected.

Again, if you're looking for an "enemy" and someone to blame for the split in the EI movement, I'd suggest you take a look at PFAW her single-handedly hijacked the bill to ensure that DREs would be allowed for use. Forever.

Had they not done that, and had folks like you not believed and passed on their nonsense (I've got plenty of email from you to prove it) that "nobody in Congress supports a DRE ban" when we now know definitely that many do, we might have been able to march forward TOGETHER, in support of a bill that wouldn't make us worse off than we are now, as Holt's bill would.

last name to bio - its posted next to my columns on Tad's World News Trust (which is in early beta or late Alpha but has a few DUers working on it). I am an actuary with a few Washington numbers - more or less retired - very retired after the 1/1/08 - with working the Hill experience in the tax wars of the 80's and 90's

You say Nelson's bill has problems. But I have never seen a perfect bill pass. Is Nelson's bill close enough to no problems so you are working to pass it - or do you see your role as just explaining why this bill is not how you would have written an election reform bill.

As to limiting the code review to "experts", are you aware of the amount of code in even a simple program - do you program now or have you ever programmed anything? Do you think a non-expert reviewing code would catch anything? Would you agree that what the output is for a given input tests a program just about as well as a code review - perhaps better - and for that kind of a test one uses math and audits. Do you have legal training that convinces you that non-disclosure except to experts who work under a non-disclosure agreement is not necessary for trademark and copyright protection?

So you say audits for 08 will happen despite your helping to kill Holt - OK - and you say you have no plan to make that happen because there are "big problems" with the Nelson bill "Starting (but not ending) with the fact that DREs will be allowed for '08." - Indeed you see the real goal as "paper based voting systems" - I guess your view is that "paper based voting systems" are the solution to election theft - and "audits without paper only" can be postponed until we have paper only. I also guess you never read up on election theft under "paper based voting systems" - I didn't think that JFK/Nixon was so long ago that folks forgot what happened in those paper based election days - but it appears I was wrong.

So you are anti any election reform that affects 08 because the Nelson Bill that you appeared happy to see introduced is dangerous and the $1 billion funding in the bill is not in any appropriations bill as yet - of course no appropriations bill ever funds unpassed legislation - but I like the lack of logic. Bev has been using this crap as she tries to kill any bill as being not good enough - It is getting hard to fight this tide when good guys (and despite your tone I do consider you one of the good guys of the left) are using Bev's "Kill Any Bill that affects the next election" arguments.

I would like to think of Bev as just a "split in the EI movement" - but I lack the imagination. The paper only call of some activists ignores our past history and the Brits (See the 2004 Guardian article) current history of problems with paper only - problems that only audit rules reduce to de minimus status. But at least I think I understand the emotion of those wanting paper only - but I thought you understood that such a Federal Bill is unlikely in our lifetime - and actually wanted something that was an improvement to pass.

As to DRE's - well, with audits they are no longer the problem - indeed election theft is no easier with DREs than with paper - but only if there are audits to control things.

I do not understand the People for the American Way (PFAW) reference and the pronoun "her" reference as to DREs being allowed in 08 because of PFAW - seems DREs with no paper trail will be allowed in 08 because no bill will be passed.

Indeed "Best chance to give voters paper trails, confidence in voting in 2008 and beyond" was a description of Holt - and perhaps might be a description of Nelson's Bill if folks work hard for the next 6 weeks. But "best chance" seems not important these days to some, as the goal appears to be kill any bill that is not exactly what we want - because anything less will "make us worse off than we are now, as Holt's bill would (have)" - (I'll leave it to you to list out the reasons Holt would have made things worse compared to the situation that results from no bill).

We are not going to agree, obviously. So I'll end my contribution to this thread by simply restating that I hope Nelson's bill passes - someday. And noting that I will not be unhappy if whatever is your perfect bill passes. Good luck - and may this be the only topic we disagree on. :-)

Wow. You sure are able to put a lot of words into my mouth that I never said. Do you have a problem with your won arguments that you feel it necessary to make up ones for me?



Yes to both. I made my living as a programmer for ten years. I also write for Computer World. And you?



Yes. Have you read the bill to determine the definition of "expert"? Do you understand that that includes everyone in the whole wide world who isn't given explicit permission to review the code? Including several million coders, programmers and software security experts across the "Internets"?

Kinda like the "non-experts" who found fatal bugs in Diebold's software when it was discovered sitting around on the Internet, etc?



No, I would not agree. Not unless you are doing those "input tests" on election day, when the machines are actually being used, and where they are actually being used. And even then, the answer is no, I don't agree.



I have no legal training. But I do not agree that our public elections, paid for with your and my dollars, at the heart of your and my government (not Diebold's or ES&S' or Sequoia's, etc.) are available for trademark and copyright protection.



Did I? Golly, I don't remember having said that. Perhaps you could point to where I did? Or do you just wish to create a strawman so you can burn it down (if so, Hannity would be proud of you).



Once again, you needn't "guess" at anything. You are again making up a strawman. I never said that "'paper based voting systems' are the solution to election theft"

Feel free to demonstrate otherwise. Though you can't.



Didn't say that either. Though did say that auditing a "paper trail" from a DRE system is meaningless, and likely worse than having no audits at all for reasons I've explained elsewhere on this thread.



You're clearly wrong about many things. But not about that. I am aware that there are allegations that Illinois was stolen via Chicago (though as a side note, even if Kennedy had lost IL, he still would have won the Presidency).

That said, you are aware of the ballot box stuffing in IL how? Because you were able to SEE that stuffing, correct?

Good luck SEEING your election stolen on a DRE voting system. Won't happen.



Good work, Hannity! After having created the phony argument, you then shoot it down. Smartly done!

BTW, I'm not "anti any election reform that affects 08", but feel free to argue amongst yourself.



I actually have no clue what Bev thinks of this bill, or any other. My comment about funding and appropriations comes from speaking to folks in Congress. Where do your comments come from?



Don't be so hard on yourself. Given your comments here, your imagination is quite alive and well!



I do want an improvement to pass. Unfortunately, not an "improvement" that is likely to make things worse (as Holt and Nelson are currently written, for example). If you want HAVA II, by all means, push for Holt and Nelson as written. That bill was also mean to improve our election system. How'd that one work for ya, boss?

And yes, I do think such a Federal Bill is likely in our lifetime. Though I don't know how old you may be.



You're just plain wrong. Read the Brennan Center Report, read the CA SoS Debra Bowen's report. You can audit 100% of the paper trails on a DRE and never find the stolen votes if it's hacked correctly.

Audits do NOT work if you are using a DRE voting system. Period. If you don't understand that, go educate yourself.



That would be better than a federal bill that allowed DREs, even with "paper trails". Sorry. Working from science here, not my opinion or best hopes, as you seem to be doing.



I don't want to give "voters paper trails" or undeserved "confidence in voting in 2008 and beyond". Do you?

I want to give them paper BALLOTS and confidence based on transparency they can check and trust, as opposed to the faith based elections you are apparently fighting for with DREs with paper trails and audits.



For a start: Because the Holt bill allows for elections and audits which have a likelihood of proving DREs with Paper Trails as the most accurate of all voting systems. And it can be done by an audit of a gamed election held on a DRE with paper trails. Even one where the paper trails are counted 100%.

Such an audit, showing the DRE to be "perfect" in it's counting (even though it was hacked and the election flipped) could then easily be used to discredit paper ballot systems, such as optical-scan (prone to many failures) and even hand-counting.

It also encodes Nondisclosure Agreements into federal law for the first time, officially pronouncing our system of government the wholly protected property of private for-profit corporations.

If you don't understand any of that, you either haven't read the bill, haven't educated yourself about elections, or just don't give a damn about either.



I have no expectation of a "perfect bill", nor am I holding out my support for one.

I will not, however, support a bill that stands to do more harm than good, as Holt and Nelson (as currently written) stand to do.

Sorry, charlie.

This is a voter education issue. I think they can be educated to check VVPATs. The bill doesn't require that, but it could happen. The other problems with DREs you have pointed out are more difficult to mitigate, but that's why these bills allows everyone to have a paper ballot. No one is forced to use a DRE. So again, it's a voter education issue.

Hmmm...So you don't care that when folks are told to check their ballot for accuracy, as they were in the Rice University study, two-thirds didn't notice their votes had been flipped?

And that was on the screen in front of their face, as opposed to on the little piece of paper that is spit out from the side of the machine in tiny letters after they've supposedly checked their screen.

(Diebold offers a magnifying glass, btw, with every DRE voting machine. Not kidding.)

You think it's an "education" matter? We should educate them to check their VVPATs and also how to detect vote flips? Since 90% currently don't check the VVPATs and two-thirds don't notice vote flips, how long will this education program go on?

And how many percent need to not notice an incorrectly registered vote when so many elections are decided by anyone from 1 to 3 percent?

And Nelson's new bill has not been gutted by the Committee on House Administration, nor by Steny Hoyer. It has benefited from the mistakes made in all the previous versions of the Holt bill. I believe you will see that anyone can get a paper ballot in 2008 under Nelson's bill. There doesn't even have to be a DRE failure first!

So YEAH -- that's a voter education issue! Educate them not to use the DREs at all, unless they absolutely positively have to (for accessibility) until 2012 when the DREs go away.

Also, in fact, not that many elections are decided by 1-3%, but that margin would be very easy to overcome by rigging op scans. So banning DREs ain't gonna solve that problem.

As far as the Rice study, as you say, they didn't even have a VVPAT. Do we have a study where voters had to review a full-page VVPAT that showed that they couldn't handle it? If contests did not appear on the VVPAT, as on the Rice summary screens, this would be seen in the audit.

That said DREs are a kludge!

Have you not read it?? You're simply wrong.

Nelson takes all of the guttings given to the Holt bill on the House side, and makes them a part of the bill! Example: Where the original Holt had very good disclosure provisions (all code, available to anybody in the public who asks to examine it -- a provision I helped Holt's office write, btw), the Nelson bill adopts the gutting that Holt took in the House so that only approved "experts" can examine the software (and *maybe* the source code).



That's a foolish, and invalid, comparison. Yeah, you can rig op scans. Yeah, IF you're going to use them, you need scientifically valid statistical audits guaranteeing a 99% confidence rate in the original count. But you've got a record of the actual voter intent that can be counted, recounted, and then counted again by ANYONE.

You have no such record from a DRE election, with or without a "paper trail".

And further reminder, if an election is decided by 1 to 3%, it requires flipping only .5 to 1.5% of the votes to flip that victory! Think that's that hard to do on a DRE system?



You seem not to have read, or understood the study.

The races where on the summary screen, but they were flipped. Wouldn't have been seen in the audit.

Furthermore, are you actually suggesting that though two-thirds of voters didn't notice the vote flips on the summary screen, somehow, they would check them a second time, on a tiny piece of paper (Diebold supplies a magnifying glass w/ each DRE) and THEN notice the flip???

And even if I stipulate that some might notice it on that second check, if they bothered to check, please review again the numbers mentioned earlier in this comment about how many votes are needed to flip an election.

And remind yourself that when it's flipped in this way, no sample audit/spot-check of those "paper trails" -- even 100% of them -- would reveal that hack.

Wake up. Please apologizing for bad legislation. Please realize that those who oppose doing ANYTHING to the DREs are going to oppose this legislation anyway (as they already have) and start standing up for what you and I both know is needed to given us the HOPE of a legitimate, transparent election!

Whose votes are you gaining by post-posting a DRE ban until 2012? Whose votes are you gaining by requiring a "durable" worthless paper trails, instead of a toilet paper worthless paper trail?

This is not about unwillingness to "compromise", this is about unwillingness to screw ourselves all over again as we did with HAVA in 2002!

Stand with science and stand up for legitimate transparent elections. Period!

Great news!

in some state in 2008 you will hear how closeeeeeeeeeee the election is and you will have your votes stolen and we as a nation will have another election stolen!

fly..from fla

If it was up to me,
you muh'fuckers would stop comin up to me
wit your hands out lookin up to me
Like you want somethin free
When my last CD was out, you wasn't bumpin me
But now that I got this little company
Everybody wanna come to me like it was some disease
But you won't get a crumb from me
Cause I'm from the streets of (Compton, Compton)
I told em all - all them little gangstas
Who you think helped mold 'em all?
Now you wanna run around talkin bout guns like I ain't got none
What you think I sold 'em all?
Cause I stay well off
Now all I get is hate mail all day sayin Dre fell off
What cause I been in the lab wit a pen and a pad tryin to get this damn label off?


I ain't havin that; this is the millenium of Aftermath
It ain't gon' be nothin after that
So give me one more platinum plaque and fuck rap!You can have it back
So where's all the mad rappers at?
It's like a jungle in this habitat
But all you savage cats, know that I was strapped wit gats when you was cuddlin a Cabbage Patch

There are allot of problems with these machines, for one thing, you have to be computer literate and be able to read to use them, and that brings up the likelihood that a poor minority with neither of these skills will not be able to use the machine and his/her vote won't count which is exactly what Bushco is hoping for.

and who are actually afraid of them. It's a cold fact of life. Some people just freeze up when they are asked to use a computer.

Lots of folks have problems with DREs, not just those "poor minorities".

It takes little computer savvy to push a button on a TV screen. (It does take the ability to read or at least recognize the names of the candidates you support.) It also doesn't take much computer savvy to tamper with this voting equipment, as has been demonstrated numerous times.

I object to DREs because they are expensive, insecure, secretive and sabotage-prone. Not because they are "computers" (which they really aren't.) In my view, paperless DREs are $3,000 pens that use disappearing ink and $5,000 abacuses that use invisible beads.

Fly by night said:



So are the ones with paper.

Self-correction of ballots is an option on a number of machines which can be turned on or off.

In heavily minority precincts, the option is off, and in Repub-leaning whitebread districts the option is on.

They need to be banned.

But noooo, we had to kill the only chance we had to require paper ballots and audits in the 2008 election and to drown our infant (election integrity movement) at the same time.

Some election integrity activists are trying to take credit for killing Holt. They should not do so because they had little or no impact on the decision. The Rethugs, the Election Center and its brainwashed monkey minions within our county and state election commissions, and the voting machine companies killed Holt. I do not consider these folks to be friends of mine and I am sad that our own movement got so confused that some of us could not see that Holt -- debated and amended as needed -- represented our only hope for national legislation to protect the 2008 election.

Way to go, guys. Now we can pin our hopes on a Senate bill with only two co-sponsors and no companion bill in the House, asking us to hold our breaths (and noses) until 2012. By then, the Rethugs will have gained control of our state legislature (and thus our 95 county election commissions) in Tennessee and it will take us a generation to recover (if then).

Nothing (of real merit) to see here. Just move along.

We should do it ---

If they're going to steal votes, let's make them actually physically steal them -- !!!

The idea which is reinforced upon us that we have to have an election result within hours is foolish -- we can have a result when the count is completed.

Obviously, we're going to have to return to paper ballots -- and move away from computers which have been the source of stole elections since the late 1960's . . . See: VOTESCAM . . .

Jim & Ken Collier's report of computer steals over 25 years ---

I'm asking how in the practical sense -- how do you think we get from here to there? Saying we need to have paper ballot voting systems doesn't make it so, though it's a good starting point in consciousness of the issue, and I don't knock it.

There are activists in the US who have worked for over four years to get verified voting and failed. We're all still facing another election in which unverifiable e-voting is going to be the predominant system. Laws have to be changed at both the individual state and at the national level. So the question is, how are "you" (and this can be "you" in a general sense) going to get the laws changed so we can have paper ballots? That's what activists tried to do that ended up as the Holt bill.

I am one who thought HR811 came out of the gate as a great bill -- and have been vilified for that. Called "selfish" (supposedly I didn't care about any state but my own), "ethically compromised" because I worked within the system with the understanding that getting laws changed is an incremental process -- though I never stopped feeling the desperate urgency and trying to make this happen fast.

There is always this point missed by the screamers and the barn burners: in a democracy change involves compromise because of the very nature of democracy, at least in the ideal, where voices are heard across the range of opinions and the most compelling of those get put into the mix. Now our current political system is without any doubt dominated by money, so those with the biggest pile get the biggest seat at the table, but the Holt bill wasn't like that. And yet Holt was and still is vilified. I don't know Nelson. Maybe he's a rat fink. Maybe he's a saint. But he introduces a bill to give all the screamers what they want, law that ends DREs, and here he's getting vilified. Go figure.

But so it goes. This doesn't apply to you, but to this thread in general: Will screamers, criticizers, vilifiers, and barn burners, the activist destroyers, the activist group destroyers, now please stand up to the plate and actually do the work it takes to get paper ballot systems for the U.S. that are transparent, reliable, accurate, accessible, and secure? If screaming, destroying, vilifying is your tactic and it gets results, then go for it, but .....

The clock is ticking ....

Kucinich has a bill for paper ballots --

How are we going to stop the war in Iraq -- ????

These are all the same things ---

The population wants sanity and an end to corruption and the Democrats are doing nothing --

We also want impeachment --

Bush has been running around for more than six years dropping bombs off his pick up truck and leaving us behind to deal with it all at the same time ---

From Global Warming to Electric Cars the public understands what is needed ---
It is corporate governing which is preventing it from happening ---

What each of us is doing about it, I hope, involves local, state and Federal government ---

and supporting organizations working for these changes.

You said:



And if both Holt and Nelson passed tomorrow, and Bush signed it the day after, we'd still be facing another election in which unverifiable e-voting is going to be the predominant system. Holt allows them forever. So what's your point?

As to standing up to the plate and doing something about it, I'm certainly doing my best. And no, screaming and vilifying is no part of that effort. But it'd be much easier if so many of you folks weren't willing to settle for a bill and a voting system that, like HAVA, would leave you worse off than you were before it passed!

no toilet paper roll, paper on all paperless DRES, and baseline audits nationwide by 2008. Any states who planned on purchasing and installing DREs would have had to plan differently.

That would have made a huge difference. That was the opportunity missed.

After Holt was amended and weakened and slowed down again and again and again, until it's now considered too late (it isn't because states like GA implemented a statewide DRE system in less than 6 months) -- well, then we have another story.

You say those changes ("no toilet paper roll, paper on all paperless DREs" would have "made a huge difference". I wholeheartedly disagree, and I believe the science is strongly on my side.

That said, you contradict yourself when you say that it was then "amended and weakened and slowed down". That was the committee process, and no bill could ever have been passed without going through it first.

Had you started with a stronger bill, one that banned DREs, for example, as Holt was willing to do, according to his office, if not for PFAW, perhaps it might have survived without becoming total junk as it has now that it's been watered down, amended, etc.

Stand up for what is RIGHT, not for what you think is "possible". Otherwise, you are negotiating with yourself.

Had the "bad guys" had to fight for delaying a DRE ban, for instance, they would have had less time to remove ALL of the disclosure provisions from the original bill (which was pretty good on that score).

But you all handed the "bad guys" much of what they wanted from the get-go, and they *still* are fighting against the bill.

Whose driving this ship? Does ANYBODY on Capitol Hill know how to negotiate, for crying out loud, without giving away the entire store before it's even asked for?!

No one, not any of the stupid legislators or the stupid, weak, ineffectual activists stopped you or are stopping you from doing anything -- nothing except reality. But let's put that aside, and say that you know how to do it and get it done. If so, why didn't you get a ban on DREs for 2008?

I'm sure all of us idiots who can't stand up for what's right would have greatly appreciated it.

When working on the original bill with Holt's office, I repeatedly warned them that a) you don't want to negotiate with yourself and b) without a DRE ban, you'll have a huge swatch of the EI community against this bill.

I was told "Brad, if you can get PFAW to back a ban on DREs, I'll change the bill tonight."

Beyond that, I don't get to personally introduce my own legislation in Congress. Nor do I have the resources (time, money, lobbyists) that the folks at PFAW et al do. So all I can do is speak up for what's right and try to convince the folks who were hoaxed that they were being hoaxed and should stand up for what they KNOW to be the right thing.

That, along with making the case for why it's right. Which I believe I've done in spades over the last many many months at BRAD BLOG.

That's all that I can do. Had those who knew that DREs should never be used in an American Election stood for that principle, and accepted no bill that would allow them, we'd not be in the mess we're in today (and there would be many fewer people AGAINST the bill in the bargain).

activists getting a stronger bill, including PFAW, and the reason you didn't get a stronger bill is the reason others didn't -- because if it could have been done it would have. So you cast aspersions on the integrity of other election integrity activists because they couldn't do something that you couldn't do either -- but somehow that's different because it's you -- and after all it was PFAW's fault.

-- I'm not saying we can't blame PFAW, it's just somehow everyone elses fault and your job is to criticize. Boo hoo about resources. Most of us work at other jobs full time and use our own personal resources, vacation time, nights, weekends, and holidays to do this work -- no donations, nothing. So we're supposed to bring down goliath and you're supposed to criticize us if we don't.

We can also rightfully blame a couple of disability activists who don't give a shit about whether votes are counted accurately and have been given the exaulted power of god. I think Hoyer ONLY gives them power because he is in league with the butcher, not because he cares about the disabled. If he did care, he'd want their votes to count (d'oh) and he can't be so stupid as to not know that unverifiable voting is a total disaster for democracy. Therefore he is either a stupid idiot (not) or he's living on the dark side of the moon. But that is another story.

Of course it occurred to me. Thus, I spent untold hours talking to PFAW. To Ralph Neas, to others there who I'll not name. I personally met with Norman Lear to discuss this matter.

No, I don't just "cast aspersions on the integrity of other election integrity activists". I get the story straight before I say a word. So when I do say a word, I know damned well that I can stand behind every syllable of it.



I have no idea who you are, Cookie Wookie. Unlike you, I put my NAME on everything I do here. So I have no clue what your involvement is/was or what you may or may not know about what went on. But I don't cast aspersions on *anybody* unless they deserve it, and unless I can prove it.

There are many here, and elsewhere, who support the Holt bill for perfectly legitimate reasons and I do not begrudge them that. Yes, I actually believe in democracy, which means I'll fight for *anybody's* right to disagree with me.

But there are others who lied about the bill, who attacked folks like me for telling the truth. Who lied about my position (as PFAW did) and lied about what the bill would and wouldn't do. People who knew better, but did it anyway. And yes, for that, I begrudge those who did so.

Want to add Jim Dickson to *your* blame list? Sounds fine by me. But we knew he was a bully and a liar from the get-go. It was, again, PFAW and friends who, instead of standing up to him, bent over for him. And in the end, he screwed them up the ass any way.

Yes. I have my story straight. And I know where to place the blame. Otherwise, I'd not have placed it in the first place.

Fly by night said:



Apparently you must have failed to read both the Holt bill and the Davis amendment.

The Davis amendment would have only *restricted* DRE use to one per precinct on election day, allowed them for early voting and all ONLY by 2012. Not 2008.

Counter to your comments above, the Holt bill *never* would have required "paper ballots" for 2008, nor for any other election in the future. Please go read it.

For more in response to the silly, and unsupported comments you made, see my previous reply above to Papau here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3051207&mesg_id=3051832

Our State Election Coordinator and State Election Commission were on record saying that this would have been the ONLY way to comply with Holt as THEY (and we) read it. We had already convinced them that retrofitting DREs with printers would be cost-prohibitive and unnecessarily time consuming on election day. We had also begun to persuade them that the AutoMark ballot marking device would work better with an all-opscan system than continuing to use ANY DREs in our voting precincts. As a result, our state election officials stopped approving any new purchases of DREs by our counties several months ago pending some decision on Holt. With Holt stalled now, they are free to lift the ban on additional purchases of DREs. Throwing more good money after bad is likely to commence in our state anytime now. That sickens us -- how does that make you feel?

Similar comments have been posted here from PA and other states. We have said repeatedly that Holt gave those of us on the ground some much needed leverage for reform. Instead, for some reason, some in our midst have been unable to hear from those of us in the most vulnerable states that Holt, even though perhaps only half a "loaf" of election reform, was needed to stave off starvation of our states' democracies. Who knows, if Holt had actually been allowed to be debated, many of its shortcomings might have been corrected in House committee and floor debate and in negotiations with the Senate. But once again, noooo, that was not allowed to happen. I certainly don't hold you responsible -- the real blame belongs to the very successful anti-Holt lobbying efforts of Rethugs, the Election Center and the misguided county and state election officials under its sway, and the voting machine companies. But you, and a handful of other folks in a now very fractured election integrity community, did not help. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Indeed.

Of course, had the election integrity community stayed united, been effective interveners in the legislative process and ushered an acceptable (to us) bill to Bush's desk for a signature, any sensible person would have still expected Bush to veto it. (If he can't provide health care for sick children, why should he care about a dying democracy, particularly when killing democracy is the only way his treasonous ilk can maintain power in this country?) But I for one would have been happy to hang that anti-election integrity anchor around his neck, and the necks of any Rethugs in his corner who had voted against a Holt bill (in any form). But once again, noooo, we don't have that opportunity.

So let's all get together now in a circle, link hands and hold our breaths until 2012. Show us how it's done, won't you?

One bill, with two Senate sponsors and no companion bill in the House, will save us. Yeah, that's the ticket.

"Silly and unsupported"? Why don't you try listening for a change? It will do you, and the election integrity community, some good.

"That sickens us -- how does that make you feel?"

I'm sorry that NOT passing the dangerous-as-currently-written Holt bill might have helped your state to get rid of DREs. As you suggest, it might also have helped PA in that regard, and even my own home state (CA) as far as that goes.

Having followed these matters closely across the entire country, however, as I'm sure you have, surely you know that it takes just one county, in one state, to effect an entire national election.

Further, as written the Holt Bill (and the Nelson companion, until DREs are taken out of the system) could well *encourage* the use of DREs for the entire country as the audit provisions might well create a scenario when an audit of a gamed DRE would prove "100%" accurate, unlike it's paper-ballot counterpart.

While I wish you luck in TN, and am happy to do whatever I can to help your efforts in your state, I won't put the entire country at risk to help one state along. And believe me, having met with elections officials in TN personally, I know what a dysfunctional (and insidious) mess you've got to deal with out there!

As to companion bills to Nelson, it's meant as a companion to Holt. So not sure what you're talking about there.

As to "listening for a change", that's what I do every day.

BTW, if you're looking for the *correct* target for your ire concerning the split amongst the EI community, might I suggest PFAW, as Holt's office told me early on that if PFAW would agree to a ban on DREs, they'd rewrite the bill overnight.

I will PM Demodonkey as her experiences in Pennsylvania (and her comments here on DU) mirror ours in Tennessee. Hopefully, she will post here before this thread collapses. I do hope others will speak up about how they think Holt might have improved the situation in their states also.

A few points: not passing Holt didn't help our state get rid of DREs (per your first paragraph). Just the opposite -- not passing Holt has helped entrench and expand DRE purchases and use in our state.

We believe that scrapping DREs in Tennessee (and the other 49 states -- 30 of which have already moved in this direction) in favor of opscans/AutoMarks, coupled with meaningful audit requirements, would move us far toward increasing election integrity. Certainly, opscans can still be tampered with, which is why meaningful audits are a must. (I would also prefer that counties purchase the opscan hardware only from vendors, that opscans use open source software, that they be programmed, serviced and maintained by local and/or state election officials and that those same officials be responsible for the production of the paper ballots used with the opscans). But since opscans start and end with voter-completed paper ballots, they provide a greater likelihood that election fraud could (and would) be uncovered through meaningful hand-counted audits of those ballots. This would be a giant step forward in any U.S. state right now.

With opscan/audits, the insecurity associated with our current election system would be reduced. That is why so many states have moved in that direction and we applaud them. We want to join them. Holt would have helped us (and other states) to do that.

Just for the record, I don't think what has gone on in any single county in any single state affected the outcome of any recent Presidential election. The quantity, variety and breadth of the election fraud in 2004 was certainly not limited to any single county (or state, or even region). I do believe that if opscans/audits had been in place in Ohio and New Mexico and Nevada and Iowa and Florida (and even Tennessee), the White House would have a better caliber of tenant today and the world would be a better place. I also believe that for 2008 and beyond.

So I do hope other DUers who agree that some version of Holt would have improved the situation in their states will chime in on this sub-thread.

One final point: Since you view Nelson's bill as the companion to Holt, you hopefully can see that if Holt had passed (or was moving now toward passage), its companion in the Senate (Nelson) could have included a DRE ban that would have had to be negotiated before any bill was sent to Bush. That negotiation could have resulted in a DRE ban taking place in 2008. But since neither bill has much of a chance to pass (or even move) in time to influence the next election, it is viewed by at least some of us as too little, too late.

Just imagine: if we had ham (Holt), we could have had ham and eggs (meaningful election reform), if we had eggs (Nelson). Sometime before 2012.

Just imagine.

PS: There's plenty of blame to go around re: the current state of affairs. The folks I am blaming for blocking Holt are the Rethugs, the Election Center and the lobotomized county and state election officials who followed R. Doug Lewis' lead and the voting machine companies. They are the real enemy, and they are the ones having any meaningful influence in blocking election reform progress. But I am sure our internecine squabbles are mighty entertaining to those treasonous SOBs right now.

Fly by night said:



My bad. Typing to fast. I meant to say something like "I'm sorry that the result of NOT passing the dangerous-as-currently-written Holt bill might have otherwise helped your state to get rid of DREs if the bill HAD been passed."



So do I. And had the Holt bill guaranteed that, you might have had an ally in me. FWIW. Unfortunately, it didn't/doesn't and will very likely result in more harm than good. Just like HAVA.



*I* don't view it as the companion bill. Nelson does. As it's specified in the bill itself. Whether Feinstein, who controls the Senate Rules Comm. agrees is another matter entirely.



While long ago I had begun to push folks in the Senate for such a ban, in hopes that it could prove a stop-gap against Holt's bill (which didn't contain such a ban), my efforts to push for a ban in both the House and Senate versions have nothing to do with failures of the Holt bill.

I'd suggest that had many of the Holt supporters not bought into the pre-DRE PFAW/Holt propaganda, and instead, stood up for what they KNEW was needed for any such election reform bill, that BOTH houses could have had such a bill in place, possibly even passed, and sitting on Bush's desk waiting to be vetoed :-)



I'd suggest we clean our OWN house before having the temerity to blame the other thugs you mention. Want to look for an enemy here? Look no further than PFAW on this one, and those who foolishly thought that by going along with them, they'd somehow be able to get the support of the folks you mention above.

Establishing minimum requirements is helpful, even if they are not everything you want, as long as states have the option of enacting more stringent requirements. Holt in no way forbade states from doing this, as is the case with some federal laws that are specifically designed to knock down stronger state-level regulations.

If a bill encodes, into federal law, ways to steal elections that can never be discovered, that is not a "floor". It's a failure.

If a bill meant to improve election systems stands to do as much or more harm than good, it is not a "floor". It's a failure.

The Holt bill, as currently written, would do both of the above.

I stand by that.

And I stand by that.

Holt was a floor and not a ceiling and would have helped tremendously in some of our back asswards states like my own - Texas. We're not getting any reform in Texas unless it's mandated by the feds and the feds pay for some of it. repugs here are happy with the way things are - as long as they keep winning. And it's not for a lack of trying either. I've been through the legislation round in Texas for two sessions and we come away with zip, zilch, nada. We are so screwed in Texas it's not even funny.

Sonia

(even a few years down the line) gives optical scan a further advantage over DREs. It's not too hard to outfit DREs with lousy printers, but if you then have to audit several hundred thousand votes' worth of that stuff, election after election, that could be a pretty nice incentive to Just Say No. New York is facing that choice, although I don't know whether a federal audit bill would tip the balance either way.

I never saw much force to the arguments that HR 811 was "dangerous," and I still don't.

The audit requirement in Holt would have been the perfect complement to the new FL system.

Since our new law throws out the DREs and replaces them with opscan (by 2008 for all but disability access and by 2012 for disability access), the next thing we need is an effective audit. There is a horribly inadequate new audit provision in the FL law and the audit in Holt would have been a vast improvement, even if not perfect.

Here's our horrible new FL audit provision:



Note that only one race in each county is audited.

Also note that the audit provision is intentionally toothless. The only consequence, even in the event of an audit that finds massive irregularities, is a report and some recommendations for future elections.

The combinations of Holt together with the recent FL changes would have resulted in a fairly reliable and transparent system. Without Holt, Florida remains vulnerable to hacking of the opscan count.

I PMed a number of people last night before I went to bed asking them to jump in this sub-thread and post their own comments about whether Holt would have aided election reform in their states. I appreciate that several did just that. But, to my surprise, about ten people PMed me back to say that they no longer have any desire to communicate with you. About half say that they've "snoozed" you here on DU so they can't even read your posts at all. I will not post the comments they sent me about you, but they were frustrating to read.

I didn't realize the sentiment was so strong. Sadly, it is even more evidence that "the perfect is the enemy of the good". If these DUers can't bring themselves to communicate with (or listen to) you, that is sad. If you can't stop your PFAW name-calling, that is also sad. (As a good (but not perfect) friend, I must say that I also didn't appreciate your snarky "silly and unsupported" comments about me on this sub-thread either.)

It's good none of us are legislators ourselves -- we'd never get anything done.

(Oh wait. How would that be different than where we are today?)

As to PFAW, I don't believe there's been any "name-calling". There has, however, been reporting, with evidence, demonstrating that they have fought like hell (with great success) to keep unverifiable DRE voting systems in the mix.

They have also mislead hundreds of folks in Congress, hundreds of well-meaning citizens groups and thousands (if not millions) of citizens about Election Reform with dishonest tactics.

That's not "name-calling". That's reporting.

Sorry about your other friends who don't feel like speaking up for themselves.

Pity. You really ought to get your eyes and your ears (and maybe your heart and your head) checked if you can lump us in with Diebold just because we disagree with you on Holt.

I would also suggest you re-read the posts from election integrists from at least six other states who have posted here who saw a direct benefit in their own states from a passed Holt bill and/or who saw that it would have resulted in scrapping DREs in other states (certainly in Tennessee and Pennsylvania, and no doubt many other places) which would have benefited us all as a result.

Why can't you see that? Why can't you hear that? Since I know you, those are the questions that really puzzle me. Others who may not know you as well have made up their own minds about what is motivating you at this point. For the record, I am not convinced they are right.

But a good starting point (for you) might be to stop comparing us with Diebold.

God(dess) knows, you should know better.

What a silly and unsupported position to take. And one that closes people off to listening to you at all.

The comparison to Diebold that you seem to take exception to, was in my subject line. In response to yours where you suggested that somehow my arguments are less than valid because your friends don't wish to speak to me.

My point in responding with the subject line I did was that Diebold doesn't wish to speak to me either. Doesn't make their arguments correct or mine incorrect. There is a REASON Diebold doesn't want to speak to me, much as I suggest there is a reason some of your friends don't wish to speak to me (eg. Their arguments don't stand up to facts and scrutiny and science).

As to your question about why I can't see that several states will be improved by passing the Holt bill, of course I "see" and "hear" that. As a matter of fact, I'll go so far as to say my own state, California, would be better off with the Holt bill! Much! For a number of reasons.

Does that mean I should endorse a bill that will likely have a net negative effect on the entire country? Simply because it will help ME in MY struggle in California? Of course not. Not as long as it takes one county, in one state, to flip an entire national election.

Diebold doesn't want to talk with any of us because they know we are on to them. That is why I don't put much importance in getting a picture taken outside an empty Diebold office after it is closed. I choose instead to confront Diebold when its representatives are out in public (recently, in front of my state legislature and the TN Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.) That, my friend, is where some meaningful change might occur -- the other is just empty photo-ops.

As far as DUers who disagree with you, I would be more than happy to post their private messages to me about why they have chosen not to engage you anymore in discussion here or anywhere else and why, in fact, they have gone so far as to place you on "ignore" here. It has nothing whatsoever to do with you having science on your side. It has everything to do with your ignoring the evidence that Holt would have improved election integrity in 2008, and also your "conversational" tactics, which some have likened to the constantly interrupting and insulting talking heads of our adversaries. So just say the word and I will post the private comments sent to me about you. They are not pleasant but I don't mind doing that if you want me to.

As far as your point that Holt would have helped improve things in vulnerable states but otherwise would have a net negative effect, you've lost me there, bro'. I cannot see for the life of me how you can acknowledge that Holt would have made things better in TN, PA, TX, FL, GA, NC, OH, CA and other states (I would add LA and AL and MS to that list myself)-- and yet still believe that it would have had a net negative effect. Do you believe that the 30 or so states that have largely already put aside DREs in favor of opscan (which is a cheaper, faster and more secure voting method to begin with) would suddenly reverse course and go to (slower, more expensive and more insecure) DREs because of Holt? Why would you believe that Holt would cause election officials in states like TN and PA to conclude (and to state publicly) that Holt would require them to scrap DREs for opscan and that election officials in other states would come to an opposite conclusion? Do you have any evidence whatsoever for that conclusion?

If so, share it. Please name the states in which Holt would have had a negative effect -- then we can ask DUers from those states to comment on that opinion of yours. We can also compare the states that we apparently all agree that Holt would have helped with the states (if there are any) that Holt would have hurt to arrive at some consensual assessment of the net negative effect of Holt. 'Cause, at this moment (and really throughout this process of saving our democracy), those of us who are actively engaged in working for election integrity have never taken any one person's view of reality as "gospel". That's not how democracy works -- that's how the "other side" works. Taking any one person's word for how things "are" denigrates everyone else's intelligence and commitment to this country, denies the power and importance of group process and smells like something we decidedly are not on this forum (and in the "real" real world).

Just to be clear here, I don't mean to imply that you are the only one who has said Holt is bad. That is also the opinion of the Rethugs, the Election Center and the lobotomized county and state election officials under R. Doug Lewis' influence and the voting machine companies. You are certainly not alone in your opinion -- just smack dab in the middle of some pretty shitty company. The difference between you and them is that they (unfortunately) did have the power, resources, access and influence that were necessary to derail Holt. But I am sure they used the dissension within our fledgling election integrity movement to their advantage.

If you, DemoDonkey and I all live in states that would have been made more secure by Holt, please call out those states that Holt would have harmed and invite residents from those states to comment. It's the least you can do. Any election integrity law that would have made things better in TN and PA and TX and FL and GA and NC and OH and CA would have made things better for ALL of us.

If you think (or know) otherwise, share with us the evidence or, at the very least, your opinions on which states would have been harmed by Holt.

Just don't choke on that pretzel logic.

If you have on the record comments from anybody about me, as opposed to anonymous comments, and they've given their approval, I couldn't care less what you wish to post in that regard. You'll note I put my name behind EVERYTHING I say, write and do. Do you do that "Fly by Night"?

I've already given you a list of states in which Holt would likely have made things worse.

I did NOT say, (as you misattributed to me) that Holt would have made CA "more secure". I said it would have helped CA (largely by giving the state money to pay for the paper ballot systems that Bowen has now ordered already, and improving on the current audits we have in this state).

None the less, any state that would have been allowed to continue using DREs via Holt (almost all of them, perhaps save PA) and any state that uses secret software to run their public election system would not have been better off under Holt, in my opinion. They might think so now (as so many felt after HAVA), but as with HAVA, time will prove them wrong in most cases.

If you say so many are already going to paper-ballot systems even without Holt, well, isn't that great? And in the meantime, we haven't had to encode secret privatized software into the federal code in the bargain.

Finally, not sure what you're implying, but no, I don't believe any "one person" as you suggest on anything. I get my FACTS straight, my SCIENCE straight, and make sure I can stand 100% behind ANYTHING I report. Period.

You'll note, btw, that I have written many times that there are some VERY good things at all (more originally, than now, but never mind that for the moment). I have NEVER called for it to be killed, but rather that it needs to be amended so it does more good than harm.

Sorry if standing up for what's right is somehow offensive or "other side" to you.

... in what other states has an opposite conclusion been drawn by state election officials from the same bill? As Marybeth and I have pointed out to you repeatedly, the State Election Coordinators in TN and PA are certainly not election reform-minded -- if they thought Holt would have allowed them to maintain DREs, they would have said so. They did not -- they concluded just the opposite. That is the major reason why Holt would have helped all states -- by de-legitimizing DREs. In my opinion, there is no state where the opposite would have been true. If I am wrong, please give us on-the-record evidence from state officials in those other states to support your opinion. As for TN, our State Election Coordinator has stated publicly at two State Election Commission meetings and two TACIR meetings (TN Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations) that TN would have to scrap DREs for opscans if Holt passed.

The second major benefit of Holt, as you pointed out, would have been that new federal funds would have been made available to correct the serious spending mistakes made with Holt funds. With Holt stalled, those funds are not available and thus a chance for election officials to correct their mistakes (that -- as another poster has pointed out -- they may want to do without admitting their initial mistakes) is less likely.

The third major benefit of Holt was that it introduced the concept of routine mandatory random audits in all federal elections. While we all agree that the audit requirements in the bill needed to be more robust, that would have been possible through amendments had the bill been allowed to be debated. (States would also have been able to implement their own more stringent audit requirements, something that Holt did not prohibit.)

As far as anonymity goes, if you ever get around to reading any threads on DU besides your own, you might know that I post my real name here occasionally when it is relevant. I think you know full well who I am, but in case you do not, Mr. Blog, this is Bernie Ellis speaking to you.

Have a good day -- just stay away from pretzels.

We're not that anonymous. Our real names are no secret. We all post enough here, and have for long enough too...

:hi:

...As mentioned to Bernie, I can't keep up with my own inbox, much less all that goes on here.

I do my best. And that's all I got. And I realize, it's not even close to enough.

Nope. Didn't know that was you. Didn't know Fly by Night was Bernie.

Would have made no difference, of course, in my advocacy, other than knowing who I was speaking to. (And I recall previous posts of yours concerning PA, and the reasons why you supported Holt, and I have never had a problem with that, or any of the good work you've done. Just in case you didn't know.)

I'm sure if I had more hours in the day, I'd read much more. As it is, I fail to read about 50% of what's in my own inbox each day.

While TN officials might have gone to paper ballots (as many other states) in the wake of Holt, unlike in PA, there is no law that would have required them to do so. Had they done so, that would, as I'm sure you know, have been fine by me.

That has nothing to do with whether I believe that the bill, as written, would have done more harm than good. It would have, for reasons I've spelled out over many months, and you -- as anyone -- are welcome to disagree.

I stand by my reporting and advocacy. 100%.

... while people from at least a half dozen states (maybe more, I've stopped counting) have posted here that Holt would have helped them achieve more secure elections. Believe me, we had long and hard debates on Holt here on DU several months ago, but since then, the anti-Holt folks have become pretty quiet. Some (like althecat) have even changed their minds after hearing from those of us who knew that Holt would make a big difference in our states and also realizing who their "strange bedfellows" were in opposing Holt -- Rethugs, the Election Center and voting machine companies. As I have said repeatedly, if those slime believed (as you do) that Holt would make DREs permanent, they certainly would not have opposed the bill.

As to this statement of yours: "While TN officials might have gone to paper ballots (as many other states) in the wake of Holt, unlike in PA, there is no law that would have required them to do so." Holt, my friend, was that law. Holt was the only reason our State Election Coordinator concluded that our state would have to scrap DREs in favor of statewide opscan. Holt was the reason he had put a hold on the purchases of any new DREs by all our counties (including Davidson). Holt was the reason we had pushed a state law -- the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act -- to mirror Holt and give it added support. With Holt shelved, the flood-gates to buy more DREs can now be re-opened in my state (and in many others).

To complete your thought, when you added: "Had they done so, that would, as I'm sure you know, have been fine by me", like a broken record, I will repeat that Holt would have caused DREs to be scrapped in many states across the country. If that would be "fine by (you)", we only wish you would leave the company of the Rethugs, the Election Center and the voting machine companies to help those of us using Holt to achieve goals (scrapping DREs, going to paper ballots, implementing hand-counted audits) that all of us support. It is not too late to reconsider.

I was FAR lonelier in the early days of Holt. Since then, many have discovered it's problems. Including folks like John Gideon and Ellen Theisen who were among the original Holt bill supporters back in 2003. I'm proud to stand with them. If we are the minority, so be it. We are correct in our stand, as I see it, and I've seen NOTHING to suggest that I was wrong in my previous and current advocacy.

Your suggest that I'm "standing with Rethugs, the Election Center and voting machine companies" is an unconvincing tactic. I'm also standing with Debra Bowen (and many more that I respect, many of whom I can't mention on record). Is Bowen "standing with Rethugs" on the issue of e-voting?

By that logic, I suppose if you were in favor of Kucinich's resolution to Impeach Cheney, I guess you're standing with Rethugs.



Have no idea what your Election Coord said, or his/her reasoning for it. One of the reasons, however, to NOT buy any more DREs at this point, would be because the specific DREs available now would have to be replaced by 2012. Had Holt passed into law, you would have seen Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S et al with new Holt-compliant DREs faster than the ink could have dried on Bush's signing statement.

As mentioned, they already have such DREs in development, and being shown to election officials.



I have never disputed that. HAVA did a lot of good too. In many states. Would you have supported it then if you know what you know now?

Your logic fails. Though you are certainly welcome to it, and I've never begrudged anyone who disagreed with me. You have a right to be wrong ;-)

Pennsylvania is not allowed to have "paper trails" due to our State Constitution. So in order to "paper up" we would have to go to 100% voter marked paper ballots (i.e. optical scan.) NOTHING ELSE CURRENTLY AVAILABLE WOULD COMPLY.

It sickens me that at this point unless we get a true miracle, over 7 million registered voters in Pennsylvania (including me), and 35 million nationwide, will have to throw our votes down the hollow well of paperless DREs in November 2008. Many electoral votes will be at stake, including 21 from Pennsylvania. And those 21 electoral votes affect our WHOLE NATION, folks, not just the Keystone State.

Demodonkey said:



Me too.

If election officials in our two states (and apparently in at least four more states we've heard from in this thread) believe (and have stated publicly) that Holt, as written, would have required that we scrap DREs in our states in favor of opscan or other systems that include paper ballots capable of being audited or recounted by hand, why can't some folks here understand that? I certainly can. The pro-Holt AND anti-DRE efforts of our local actions would have had positive consequences globally (in both a literal and figurative sense).

Defeating Holt means that folks in TN and PA (and other states) will be using DREs in 2008 who would not have otherwise had to risk our votes that way with a passed Holt bill.

That's not my opinion. That's reporting.

And THAT EFFECTS EVERYONE.

While some states would have likely benefited from Holt (as would my homestate of CA, for instance) too many others would not have, and the results would have been far worse than the positives, most likely.

A federal bill would have institutionalized 100% unverifiable, unauditable DRE voting systems forever after. It would have encoded secret propriety software, owned by private companies into federal law as the heart of our public, taxpayer funded election system.

It would have allowed states such as Ohio, Missouri, California, Georgia, Texas, Florida, Alabama, Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, Utah etc. etc. etc. to continue to use unverifiable, unauditable, hackable DRE voting systems FOREVER.

Sorry if you find that doing away with them in a small cluster of states such as PA is worth all of the above for the rest of the country. FOREVER.

I respectfully disagree.

If state election officials in TN, PA and many other states interpreted Holt to mean that DREs would have had to be scrapped for opscans to meet Holt's requirements, how could officials in other states come to different conclusions?

Believe me, if our corrupt State Election Coordinator could have spun Holt in any way to legitimize and make permanent DREs in Tennessee, he would have. He cannot and has not -- his public pronouncements have been that Holt would have required that we scrap our DREs for opscans. That is why he has not allowed any counties to purchase any more DREs, pending some decision on Holt. Now that Holt has been shelved, my guess is that our counties will be given the go-ahead to start buying more DREs. So killing Holt has meant more DREs in our state, more money invested in them and more impetus to ask the election reformers here to "just move along".

We're not going anywhere, but killing Holt has made our jobs much more difficult. As another poster commented upthread, it is likely a number of our county election officials also knew that buying DREs was a mistake but couldn't admit that they had wasted millions of state, federal and local money to buy them. Holt would have given them the cover to do the right thing without admitting they were wrong in the first place. Stalling Holt means they no longer have that cover. 'Tis a shame.

You shoulda quit while you had convinced yourself that you were ahead.



Because the laws are different in every state, my friend.

The point in PA is that the commonwealth has decided that their constitution will not allow paper trails to be used with DREs (due to privacy issues, which, frankly, all states should have already figured out!)

That means that if they are forced to use VVPATs with their DREs, then they will have no choice but to go to actual paper ballot systems.

I don't believe there is any such law in TN, but rather, your state officials may have decided that if Holt passed, the writing would be on the wall, so they would go to paper ballots, rather than DREs which would either become obsolete (due to changes required in the paper weight of the VVPAT printers) or later outlawed entirely when folks realized that Holt was really HAVA 2.

But you know TN better than I.



Golly, what happened to that "don't believe one person" thing you scolded me (inaccurately) for upthread?

Guess it's only those of us who put our names on our work who are held to such standards.



Yes, so would a bill that a) Allows DREs as Holt does and b) Declares that waterboarding is legal.

Should we support the bill because it would give TN a reason to go to paper ballots, according to the State Election Official you referred to? Or should we say no to such a bill?

People from at least a half dozen states have posted on this thread that Holt would have helped them get rid of DREs in their states. No one has posted on this thread (besides you) that Holt would have harmed their states. In fact, you've even admitted that Holt would have helped California, your current residence. You don't hear that.

While election reformers and election officials in those half dozen states (and many others) all have different laws re: elections, they all came to the same conclusion, i.e., Holt would have helped them scrap DREs for opscans. You don't hear that.

Tennessee has only one State Election Coordinator. His name is Brook Thompson. Brook is on the Board of Directors of the Election Center, for pity sake. If he could have twisted Holt somehow to be able to maintain DREs, he would have. He can't. You don't hear that.

Holt would have given cover to county and state election officials to correct past mistakes that they perhaps do not want to admit. You don't hear that.

Holt would have brought new funds to correct those mistakes. You don't hear that.

Holt would have introduced the concept of routine mandatory random audits to federal elections, which would have been the basis for requiring durable paper ballots capable of being recounted by 2008. You don't hear that.

Had Holt moved forward in committee and on the floor of the House, it would have been able to be amended to improve the weaknesses that most of us agree were there. DREs could have been banned through the Davis amendment or through a compromise with a companion Senate bill (e.g., Nelson). You don't hear that.

If the Rethugs and the Election Center and the voting machine companies knew (or believed or thought) that Holt would have further legitimized DREs, they would have endorsed and supported the bill, not worked so hard (and so effectively) to stall it. All those scum are on your side on this issue, Brad, and you still don't hear that.

Are you really unable to hear from most of us here who have valid reasons to have supported Holt because of the benefits it would have brought to our many states? Are you really unable to hear that there are a number of other election reform DUers who have just stopped trying to communicate with you at all, and have placed you on "ignore" on this forum?

Frankly, this exchange -- my first with you on this forum -- has helped me understand their frustration with you, which formerly I did not share.

Can you hear me now?

I heard you, and all of those comments previously, Bernie. Most of them long ago when you were unable to participate here.

I likely would have replied to you comments with less venom (you may have no idea the extraordinarily vile attacks, propaganda, and bullshit that's been flung the way of myself, and the others such as J. Gideon, E. Theissen, J. Bonifaz, E. Levy., H. Jacobson and many others, from Holt's own folks, to all sorts of EI folks) had I known it was you, I'm happy to admit, but I would have replied with the same content.

You may not have heard me. It takes a single county, in a single state, to steal an entire national election. Smaller ones are as important, and those are cake. Despite your "half a dozen states".

When I take a stand, I do so because (and only AFTER) I've got my facts straight. On this, my facts are straight.

For the record, I was also told that the committee process would be used to correct the problems of the bill as written when introduced. The committee process damn near raped everything of value in the bill as introduced.

I've heard it all, Bernie.

I've weighed the pros and the cons.

I've heard from states where the belief was that nothing in Holt would even require them to do away with toilet-paper rolls (and their legal judgement was sound!)

I've heard of the new Sequoia DRE VVPAT printers, already being demonstrated, that print "durable" paper ballots.

I've seen how an election could be stolen in such a way that no "audit", not a 100% audit, could have detected the theft. And even worse, "proven" how DRES were more "accurate" than paper in the bargain.

I've heard from Dill and Rubin and Stewart and Neas and Becker how there was no support in Congress for a DRE ban. I've seen them be unable to offer a single name of a Holt supporter who'd have withdrawn their support had it included a ban.

Do you think there would have been a Susan Davis amendment (which only restricts, doesn't ban, and only by 2012) had folks like myself not made such a fuss? Had I not met with her in person, helped explain the concerns to her, and to her staffers over many many hours on the phone?

Do you think there would have been a Nelson version with a ban (only by 2012) had the folks in Florida not raised hell? The EI folks in FL do not support Holt either, btw.

I've never disagreed with your right to disagree with me. But I say what I say, I report what I report, because I know the FACTS of what's going on here.

You may disagree all you wish. But I listen very closely. To MANY folks. From every aspect of this fight.

There is a reason Debra Bowen has not endorsed the Holt Bill, Bernie.

If you wish to continue the conversation, I'm delighted to speak with you any time. You have my number.

Holt was that half a loaf and had it moved forward, its deficiencies could have been addressed and might well have been addressed if our own EI community had remained strong and committed to progress (not perfection, but progress.) We remain the Davids fighting the forces-of-evil Goliaths (who, in this instance, serve the great Satans who rule without the consent of the governed).

Tell me, are we better served by having no meaningful 2008 election reform in the states which had not yet implemented positive reforms (there are 19 without a meaningful paper ballot process and only eight which are considered most vulnerable at this point -- and TN and PA are two of those eight)? We weren't looking for Holt to change every state, except perhaps to have legitimized (and mandated) some form of routine mandatory random audit. Where DREs held sway, Holt would have helped scrap them. Period. End of sentence.

DemoD knows that widespread election fraud is a fact in her state. I know that widespread election fraud is a "slam dunk" in my state. If TN and PA (and the several other states that have chimed in on this thread) had been rescued from our DRE dungeon by Holt, the entire country would have been better for it. Period. End of thought. And almost end of participation in this thread -- I think I do have one more response left in me. (See below.)

"Tell me, are we better served by having no meaningful 2008 election reform in the states which had not yet implemented positive reforms"

Do you plan on stopping your fight for meaningful 2008 election reform? I don't know.

And no, we would not have been better served by a bill that overall did much more harm than good, as Holt would have, in my (well-researched) opinion.

I am seeking progress. Not perfection. But progress, that regresses us in too many ways, is not progress. It's damned dangerous.

Like all the other states, KS has experienced a rush to buy up and use these flaky, democracy-destroying machines. Here in Sedgwick County we have the ES&S Ivotronics with an audit log and as far as I know there is no audit required at all. If the Holt bill required an audit (not sure of the requirement in the bill), I think it wd have pushed us a little closer toward democracy.

After giving it a lot of thought and reading Brad and many others, I was very reluctantly in favor of the Holt bill, despite the danger of perhaps legalizing the touchscreens indefinitely. One of the big reasons I thought it would be some help was the effect on such states as TN. Just a few states could swing a nat'l election. Where the machines are firmly entrenched as in TX, there's not the slightest chance of having a fair election IMO. Of course GA and AL and some other states that are sewed up by the machines go without saying.

It's a close call, but I do think it might have helped in KS.

Look, if voters were told to verify the fucking VVPATs, enough of them would do it so that if there were such discrepancies, they'd raise bloody hell, ask for paper ballots, and under the provisions of these bills, they'd get them.

The DREs would be taken out of service so fast that it would not be long before they'd be sitting in landfill somewhere if anyone tried to "game" them in such an obvious way. Just look at the effect of one possibly-gamed election in FL (CD13). They're throwing out every DRE in the State! And they will continue to steal elections there with scanners!

Sure, if you throw a bunch of voters into a precinct and tell them to ignore the VVPATs, they'll ignore them. I'm sure this will happen in places like Cuyahoga County. But if you can educate voters that the VVPAT is the ballot of record for audits and recounts, and that audits and recounts CAN change the outcomes of elections, then enough of them will check the VVPATs to ensure that the DREs won't be "gamed" in the way you have suggested.

I of course agree that that this is a kludgey system, and that one ballot is all that's needed -- not two. But to suggest that an audit of DREs that voters have been complaining about all frickin' Election Day long would engender a sense of confidence really is an insult to the intelligence of the average voter, assuming they are told the truth about DREs in the first place. I would think you could help do that by at least blogging about it once in a while, right? ;)

Also, the Brennan study you cite says that this particular exploit would be detectable in an audit, because you'd see an excessive number of do-overs on the VVPATs caused by the voters who do detect the mismatches between screens and VVPATs. So people are hip to this attack, and it's a pretty lame way to steal an election.

You should know by now that the way to do that is to hack the ballot definition files, that this would be COMPLETELY undetectable on an optical scan system, and that anyone can do it -- not just Ed Felten and his geeky grad students! I mean like an election official could do it! Wake up and smell the coffee, will ya?

Sorry but only hand counting enough votes to know who won will tell you who won. That can be done by auditing either VVPATs or paper ballots. I'd prefer the paper ballots, the use of which is encouraged by these bills, but paper ballots alone are certainly no panacea.

Go read the science (as I have), from Brennan Center to MIT/CalTech to Rice University to University of California. Then get back to me and tell me I'm grasping at straws.

No, telling people to "verify the fucking VVPATs" doesn't do the trick.

Perhaps you're unaware of the number of people (thousands) that have "raised bloody hell" when DREs failed. How many of them were "taken out of service"?

As to finding the problem with via an audit, as the Brennan Center report says would happen, both the lead investigator of the report, as well as the head of the Brennan Center's study confirmed that the Holt/Nelson audits do not do what would be needed to detect the hack. Sorry.

And it's hardly a "lame way to steal an election". It's ingenious, and virtually undetectable. Even with a 100% audit of the VVPATs.

Period.

Auditing VVPATs is smoke and mirrors. Even "auditing" 100% of them. The coffee's on me.

And also to decertify them any time a VVPAT does not match a summary screen.

And also to educate voters about this, just like HAVA says to educate them about the effect of casting an overvote.

But Congress does not take this problem seriously. We know that. All this was discussed and rejected by the powers that be.

So the best solution is to ban the DREs and we finally have a bill that does that.

So what's the problem? Is it the 2012 date? Then tell everyone to ask for a paper ballot until then. It's their right under this bill.

I think that's a reasonable compromise.

Meanwhile the false sense of security will be voting on paper and having it shredded, uh, I mean scanned.

Emlev asked a good question (may have been over on the BRAD BLOG thread on this).

If Nelson believes, as he said in his statement when this version of his bill was released last week: DRE voting systems are "unreliable and vulnerable to error," the senator says, "The bottom line is we have to ensure every vote is counted – and, counted properly...Citizens must have confidence in the integrity of their elections.”

...then don't we deserve such confidence in 2008? Or must we be forced to wait until 2012?

Why don't we need to ensure every vote is counted in 2008?

And why aren't you fighting to have the bill amended to do ensure THAT?!

Instead, we go "hungry" for another critically important national election.

It helps to have a bill being debated (in committee or on the floor) to amend it. Particularly a bill with 220+ co-sponsors like Holt.

The perfect (don't know that bill's number, maybe you can help me here, Brad) is the enemy of the good (Holt).

As you, and others, have noted on this thread, *I* am not the reason that Holt is in trouble.

As one PFAW Board Member said recently, "Had it not been for Brad Friedman, PFAW would have ceded even more."

"Even more"?!!

What else might they have rolled over on?

SOMEONE has been trying to hold the line here, DemoD. At the same time, we began pushing long ago for someone to fix the problem in the Senate, when it looked like Holt was hopeless and had rolled over for PFAW's instance on DREs.

I'll take everything you want to throw at me. But I've never called to kill the bill. I've called only to make it better. And I've done EVERYTHING in my power (which isn't a whole hell of a lot) to do exactly that.

"Perfect is the enemy of the good" is a talking point straight out of Holt's office. It is meant to marginalize those who have perfectly legitimate reasons for not endorsing this bill (and, as I noted in and early note, that includes Debra Bowen for a reason!)

I've *never* expected a perfect bill. I'd be happy for a good one.

..., anything of substance to address the gnawing hunger for election integrity here in the Orange State. We will starve to death if we have to wait for steak.

A bill like Holt that had our corrupt State Election Coordinator conceding publicly that our state would have had to scrap DREs for opscan statewide had lots of democracy-feeding nourishment in it, enough to feed our country in these famine-flecked times. Here in Tennessee, we weren't yet to David Copperfield's "Please sir, I want more" stage. We were still at the "we want anything" starting gate for meaningful progress in rescuing our franchise. We only wish our friends around the country had heard the pleas for any nourishment coming from the hills of TN and PA, the plains of TX and the swamps of FL (and from many other corners of our country).

As far as the Holt office "talking point" you refer to, the proper source for the statement
"The perfect is the enemy of the good" is Voltaire. Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. Indeed.

Voltaire also said:

* Clever tyrants are never punished.

* It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.

* To hold a pen is to be at war.

* Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.


He also said:

* It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

* We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.


I'm done here.

Time for some biscuits and gravy and another day spent saving our democracy, one step at a time.

If you're waiting on me, you're backing up.

This day is all we have, and it is as perfect as it gets.

And while Voltaire said it originally, the Holt supporters have cynically picked it up as their rallying cry.

(Not suggesting you have done so, cynically, but the folks who first began using it, in synchronized lockstep, did so.)

I wonder if we should change the collective label to "perfectionists" vs "progressives?"
Progress happens in stages, some don't get that apparently?

It's about 99% complete right now.

And mad props to my new boyfriend, the very kick-ass Sheldon Whitehouse. Between this and the Mukasey nomination, I'm all for him!

Bush will veto it, anyway.

that it will pass and that Bush won't veto it?

:yourock:

+1 to those who get the reference

dumbfounded that my senator actually is INVOLVED with anything! lol...


I mean that, anything! Besides the inane pledge to march to assure our votes count, blah blah blah...

My girlfriend thought up a simple idea on how such a change could be made, quicker than a total ban. That
wouldn’t garner as much opposition by manufacturers of the machines. It’s simple and it’s really effective too.
Just create a new voting law for all states & districts for ALL elections. One way of voting everywhere, period.

Simply create an ATM style touch screen machine that’ll create a paper result. If it isn’t correct on paper, then
they can vote again, negating the prior vote, still producing just one paper. That paper is fed into a scanner to
read it as the optical scan machines do now. The papers are all collected and HAND COUNTED in plain sight, all
by a panel w/bipartisan representative oversight. At least tampering there can't change two prior count results.

This allows them to have an immediate set of two results. If one of them is not matching, right away, fraud would
be caught.They’ll have a hard time hacking two machines. That result is for all intents PRELIMINARY. Until the final
paper trail count is in and all three match within a very tight margin of error, there won't be an official result then.

This way you won’t have optical scan theft which is possible (since results are tabulated in a computer, so beating
touch screens won’t stop that) & you can’t have ’stuffed ballot boxes’ either. Each voter gets to verify their vote.
Also, if one method fails (ie. the ATM goes down) a person can manually fill an optical form for the next two steps.

The only possibility of ‘fraud’ then is for a partisan hack to go in and say 20-30 vote castings went wrong, but it
will be very easy to catch, if nobody but them has that problem then. We have technology for this compromise
so why not use it. Make all manufacturers happy, have no need EVER for a re-count as each had one already!

We need to fix this problem so the right approves (those corporate liberals who want companies involved in it.)
Furthermore, what a great way to catch fraud. If one method is hacked, the other two consistently showing a
different result is your proof, right there. In fact, it will discourage them from even bothering to try and hack.

You've got some good ideas mixed in with some not so good.

The largest not-so-good is using "ATM style touch machines" for a number of reasons. Some of which I mentioned in an earlier post up-thread, but will repost the key parts of for you here:

Good points. I didn't consider that. Well how about this one here?
Eliminate the ATM, and go with scanning machines, but just have
a mandatory recount by hand of scanned ballots, in each place.

But with one caveat. Allow ATM style machines for those who will
view the paper result and verify it. The disabled who may not be
able to darken in the squares on a scanner type ballot. The idea
is the machine is just there to help those who need it, and not
a source of a vote count. And still, only the paper count will
be the final result. The scan machine will only be preliminary.

My concern is we beat the touch screens, but scanners are little
better, if they can be flipped in computers. They can't flip paper
in a computer. And EVERY election will have it's recount already.

No slowing it down for a later count, calling in people in what is
a haphazard way to count paper. It will be part of the process,
and we will all have to wait for it. A little more time is fair trade
for a fair election where votes count and are not stolen away.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060111195345/www.accupoll.com/News/NewsReleases/releases/2005-08-02.html

AccuPoll made nice readable 8.5 x 11 VVPBs that could be scanned or human-hand counted. Could have worked as either a DRE or a ballot marker.

Shame this "good guy" innovative company was driven under by heavy pressure from many of the same sources that are now working to kill HR 811.

for Congress to even consider. ;-)

:argh:

magnifying glass to make sure there are no loopholes.

...of loopholes. No magnifying glass needed, unfortunately.

write the perfect bill (sure, get Nancy, Bev, John, Mary Ann, etc. to help if needed but I don't imagine you need any help), find sponsors, get it introduced, keep it from being changed along the line to it remains pristine, get it through the House & Senate and get the president to sign it and save us. We're depending on you -- the field is clear. Go for it. Nothing is standing in your way is it?

on the issue of electronic voting.

It is of the utmost importance that we pass a bulletproof bill that bans electronic voting. As you well know, the republican party's team of anti-democratic corporate lawyers will quickly figure out how to render any bill that bans electronic voting worse than ineffective if it is not bulletproof.
;)

We should have had one of these bills for 2008.

As I said above, it sickens me that at this point unless we get a true miracle, over 35 million voters nationwide will have to throw our votes down the hollow well of paperless DREs come November of next year. Many electoral votes will be at stake, including 21 from my home state of Pennsylvania. And those electoral votes affect our WHOLE NATION, folks.

Yes, we should and very possibly could have had one of these bills. Maybe still could.

That said, Fly By Night is absolutely correct when he says that election integrity activists had little to no impact on the destruction of HR 811. Sorry if this bruises anyone's ego but I have spent plenty of time over the past two and a half years pounding the halls of the Cannon, Longworth, and Rayburn Congressional Office Buildings in D.C., and few if anyone I've talked to there recognizes such sources as "The Brad Blog", "Black Box Voting", "Psephos", "OpEd News", or "Democracy For New Hampshire". Nope, not even on the radar. Sorry.

No, as Fly By Night points out, it is the Rethugs (and the DINOs, I would add), the Election Center and the NACo-led county and state election officials who followed the lead of R. Doug Lewis and the voting machine companies. They joined "our" leader Steny Hoyer and others to put the kibosh on HR 811 and, at this point, pretty much any chance for reform for 2008 and maybe beyond.

And for those of you who call HR 811 "Microsoft 811" just remember that MICROSOFT is one of the biggest "Premier Corporate Members" of NACo (the National Assn. of Counties), which is the ring leader in killing HR 811.

http://www.naco.org/Content/NavigationMenu/About_NACo/Membership/Corporate_Membership_Program/Corporate_Programs.htm

The only chance we might have had was to be stronger and more united. If, instead of some of some of us banging the drum and blowing the fife and screaming about "we the people", we all had pulled together and acted strategically to get Holt passed (and then used it as a base to work for more), we might have made a difference.

And if, instead of having to put out internal fires and respond to attacks and opposition coming from within our own movement, some of our state and national groups could have focused scarce time and resources on expanding their base and support, we might have made a difference.

Even Rep. Holt was attacked and vilified, called "traitorous" as I recall, for introducing the HR 811 bill and doing his best to help. And now I see upthread that Senator Nelson is getting pounded on too, less than three days after he introduces something to try and help this issue on the other end of the Capitol building.

Way to go, people. Kick the people in the teeth who are in position in the system and want to help. Smart, very smart.

Thank God the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s worked through their differences, got it together, and worked strategically -- or their African-American grandchildren would still be sipping from "colored only" drinking fountains and sitting at the back of the bus. Can we somehow live up to the Civil Rights Movement's legacy? Or is it too late and our grandchildren will still be "voting" on paperless DREs in "fair elections" forty years from now?

Our elections will continue to be "Groundhog Day", brought to us by Diebold and ES&S, until we learn to work together.

Like DemoD, I hope that being strategic, and learning from our Civil Rights elders (like Dr. Charles Kimbrough, Rev. Sonnye Dixon and others) is not too much to ask at this 11th hour.

Demodonkey said:



Yup. And had you Holt supporters not passed on propaganda and lies from PFAW as if it was the truth, we might have be strong and united by now.

But you bought into the lies ("There is no support in Congress for a ban on DREs" and "Minorities are better served by DREs" etc.) and called it "politics".

Instead of standing up for what you KNOW is needed for REAL election reform, you were prepared to settle for another false promise. Just as with HAVA.

There is no perfect legislation, and I've never expected any. But I believe it's fair to ask for legislation that makes us better off, rather than worse off.

You, of course, know exactly what I'm talking about, and that I'm right. Whether you're willing to admit that outloud here for all to read is another question entirely.

Holt bill agreed with and supported the misinformation and misleading generalizations in PFAW's action alerts? Sometimes alliances are struck with groups who have the same goal for particular movements, but does that mean they all agree on everything everyone else does? Why smear (as in "bought the lies") proHolt bill activists because of the behavior of PFAW?

Brad Blog seems to have struck up an alliance with Bev Harris and Blackbox voting (correct me if I'm wrong on that). Does that mean support for the way Harris accused other activists of filing qui tam lawsuits all the while secretly doing it herself at the very same time she was smearing them? Or does it mean you've allied with her on issues where you find agreement? I'd think it was the latter. W
I remember when we were working to keep the FCC from futher deregulating the media and built alliances with the NRA, NOW, Musicians Unions, lord, there were a million people who signed on to stop it, everybody who normally doesn't mix. We did that in my state trying to add paper and hand counts to DREs when we had to work with members of the Constitution Party and right wingers. Not fun, not pleasant, and certainly we didn't agree with them on almost everything else.

But as far as there being no support in Congress for a ban on DREs, the argument was that there wasn't enough support by the people who have the power to get the job done -- legislators --like the 220 or so who at one time were signed on to HR811 -- to get them to vote for a ban of DREs at that time. Since they haven't banned DREs, that was obviously true at the time. Political thought is always evolving, so it doesn't mean it can't happen someday. The support in Congress, the 220 or so co-signors for HR811, was -- to generalize -- for paper, banning the tp roll technology, and baseline audits for 2008.

Yes. Of course. I'd not have reported it, unless I did.

If you need me to go get URLs, let me know, but for speed and just a few quick examples:

+ Common Cause and MoveOn both put out "action alerts" suggesting that had we had the Holt bill, FL-13 wouldn't have happened (untrue, according to the computer scientists and security experts I spoke with).

+ Avi Rubin, David Dill, Warren Stewart, Joan Krawitz and countless others said that though they wished DREs weren't used, "there is no support in Congress for a DRE ban". Obviously, Susan Davis' attempted amendment to Holt, and Nelson's bill reveal that's nonsense.

+ Holt's office themselves told me that if PFAW would reverse their position, they'd rewrite the bill immediately to include a total ban on DREs.

I can give you much more, if you want it. And all of the above is independently comfirmable.



Of course, politics can make strange bedfellows. I've found myself agreeing with Republicans from time to time, but it doesn't mean I'm anti same-sex marriage. However, if I put out a mailing or article, repeating the anti same-sex marriage talking points, then we've got a problem.

The pro-Holters, time and again, did not just share a political alliance with PFAW. They endlessly repeated their unsupported nonsense as talking points for it.

That, despite my having called them on it. Despite my having asked for evidence for their assertions. And their admissions to me that they had none!



We have no "alliance" with anybody. Period. The work that BRAD BLOG does is independent, and often at odds with many folks whose work I respect, and in agreement with many folks whose work I abhor. Eg. I have been quite supportive of PFAW and MoveOn on various issues, despite their having gotten it wrong on Holt.



And yet, those who claimed "there was no support in Congress for a DRE ban" were unable to give the name of a SINGLE legislator who was in favor of Holt, but who would change their vote if it included a DRE ban. Not one.

At the same time, I spoke to legislators who either thought Holt DID ban DREs, or who had no idea if it did or didn't.

It was a disingenuous talking point meant to support bad policy, as favored by a very powerful public interest group (PFAW). No idea still WHY they are in favor of DREs (though I know what they've told me, and that there is no science to back it up, by their own admission), but they wanted DRES, that was their story, they stuck with it, and they made everyone else do same.

If those who KNEW that DREs are antithetical to democracy, folks like Rubin and Dill and Stewart, etc. the most respected in the EI community had said: "We will except no election reform bill that doesn't ban DREs" then such a bill would have appeared MUCH sooner than it now finally has. In fact, it might have been in time to effect the '08 election.

Instead, the non-politicians played politics, bought into PFAW's bullshit (perhaps, in part, not to draw the ire of Ralph Neas' friend Jim Dickson of AAPD, who ended up rejecting the bill anyway!) and now we're in the mess we're in.

Those who oppose the bill now, would have opposed it anyway if it had a DRE ban. So what did this sell-out give us? A bad, dangerous bill, fought for by folks who know better, and no Election Reform in the end.

Dumb all around.

Since they haven't banned DREs, that was obviously true at the time. Political thought is always evolving, so it doesn't mean it can't happen someday. The support in Congress, the 220 or so co-signors for HR811, was -- to generalize -- for paper, banning the tp roll technology, and baseline audits for 2008.

You and I have remained civil to each other while disagreeing on HR 811 and I would sincerely like to keep it that way.

That said, you know damn well I hate DREs and would love to get rid of them, and shame on you for insinuating otherwise. I have never said or supported statements such as 'minorities are better served by DREs', nor have the vast, vast majority of the other people who support HR 811.

As far as passing on propaganda, it seems to me that the so-called activists who were against HR 811 did the lion's share of that. Remember the names and remarks such as "The Holt Hit Squad", "Microsoft 811" "traitorous bill" etc. etc. etc. Shall I go on?

I am a realist. It is great that we have two Senators now willing to put a DRE Ban on the table and into the mix, and will work like crazy to support that, but I have grave reservations as to how far this gets in Congress, especially for the immediate future. The one thing S.2295 has going for it is that it may prove to be easier for Congress to consider banning something that takes effect years down the road. I hope so, and that we do get something passed to at least eventually get rid of these damn DREs (and get some sort of audits to provide at least a little protection for everything else!)

In the meantime, pending passage of this bill or something else, as I said there are 35 million votes that are going to be at risk on paperless DREs in 2008. Seven million in my own very targeted swing state of Pennsylvania alone. Those votes will be more than enough to swing any national election. Then there are the millions and millions more votes that will be on paper but that paper will go completely unaudited without one of these bills passing in time. Remember, most of Ohio was on paper in 2004.

As it will now more or less take a miracle to get something through Congress in time to protect 2008, I would sincerely like to hear your suggestions for a realistic strategy to deal with these threats that we will very possibly be facing next year.

And finally, as so many have said on here time and time again, if you Brad, or anyone else doesn't care for what is on the table in the way of legislation, you certainly have been and still are free to write your own bill, find a sponsor, get it introduced, find co-sponsors, get it through committee, get it to the floor and passed in both Houses, and get Bush to sign it. If it's a good bill with measures I can support, I will be behind you all the way working my tail off to help.

Marybeth

Those were the words of the Holt bill supporters in general. If my too-fast way of replying to the barrage on this thread from several different folks led me to type otherwise (which it did) by using "you" to describe the PFAW/Holt supporters in general, I apologize.

As well, I hadn't realized that you, Marybeth, were "DemoDonkey" so thanks for clarifying.

When you say, however, that "there are 35 million votes that are going to be at risk on paperless DREs in 2008." you, again, downplay the problem. There are many many more million votes that are going to be at risk, whether they are on "paperless" or "paper trail" DREs. The canard that "paperless" DREs are somehow worse than "paper trail" DREs is disingenuous. Or at least, a now-discredited legacy from a time when folks actually thought "paper trails" could make a difference on DREs.

You'll note that I was no supporter of Holt's previous version (HR 550) because of that, and feared, at the time, that the drumbeat for "paper trails" would come back to haunt those who'd called for it. But I shut up (mostly) at the time because the R's were in charge, and I knew that no bill could move forward in that Congress, and it was better that EI issues should be heard, somehow, even if the framing and proposed "solution" was a damned dangerous one.



I am working on one. Whether it works or not, we'll see. But I will write about it, hopefully soon, and when I do, I am glad to hear that I can still rely on your support (if you like the idea) despite our disagreements about Holt.

Right now, the problem is that those in the House and Senate who like it, can't bring it forward out of respect for the Holt and DiFi's bills. If those die, for good, then this one can (hopefully!) emerge in time to have an actual effect on 2008!

... but please know that only a tiny, tiny fraction of HR 811 supporters, really just a handful of people at high levels in PFAW, support nonsense like 'DREs are better for minorities'. The rest of us hate DREs just as much as you do. But we differ in that we see incremental change as preferable to no change.

I agree about "paper trails" being no good. Heck, Andy taught me his song "Paper Trails" and I even sang it with him in Nashville (and later added my own verses) so certainly I get it about paper trails being a danger. But again, I see incremental change as preferable to no change. If Holt passed, all of PA, TN, and maybe a bunch of other areas would go immediately to voter-MARKED paper. Yes, some other states could, yes COULD, go with paper trails for a time, but the bill wouldn't REQUIRE them to. We as activists could use our energies to push them toward doing the right thing to comply with the bill sooner rather than later.

And don't forget that the majority of votes in this country are already on Optical Scan, so there IS voter-marked paper. But in many places that paper is not being audited, and again these bills would improve that situation. Not make it perfect, agreed, but better than what we have there now which is no audit at all in many places.

One thing that I think we all should start using as a frame, right now, is that none of these bills, and none of these voting systems, are going to be permanent. We are going to have to revisit this issue federally and/or in the states every so many years, like the Farm Bill or the Energy Bill, just because the technology and the problems surrounding elections is changing rapidly, and will continue to change. No voting system available right now will last for the next 40 years (and satisfy so many while doing it) like the Levers did.

As far as Congress, I still think that strategically for us, Holt should have passed the House (and maybe should still) and gone on to the Senate where it would probably bog down in partisan politics. That way, at least the issue stays alive. With Hoyer jamming it and maybe killing it in the House, not only HR 811 but the ISSUE of reforming election systems is becoming sort of poisoned and that is bad for the chances of anything else moving anywhere in the foreseeable future.

In the Senate, I'm not sure yet how Nelson could affect the logjam, if at all, but I don't see Feinstein's bill moving. Feinstein knows it contains things that Republicans don't like (plus it's not a great bill), but I don't see Feinstein (as Chair of Rules and thus the gatekeeper on this issue) moving anything else but her own bill. And her bill is NEVER going to die there, as she will not kill her own bill.

So, the above said, if there is truly something good that could go forward onto the table in either chamber "but/for" Holt or Feinstein, I think whoever it is should just move it. There would be no disrespect, especially now considering that everything is jammed up on this issue.

At this point the general consensus seems to be pretty much a done deal that it is too late for 2008 (whether it really is or not at this point) even among many activists. So we also better start thinking Plan B to do ANYTHING WE CAN to protect the 2008 elections, which I fear may not be much without paper and audits. Have you got a Plan B in mind?

And again, I am among those who believe that even if the voter-marked paper and audits aren't EVERYWHERE, the more places we could have gotten them, the more it would have helped.

Marybeth

I fully understand that.



Her Chief of Staff has told me that she realizes there are problems with her bill and that changes need to be made. I'll take his word for that, and encourage folks to let her know what needs to be changed in her bill



While I concur, and have tried to make that argument, I've met resistance on that point. But I've met resistance before (read up thread) and it hardly dissuades me ;-)



Of course. And have been working on it for some time. Will let everyone know when there's something that they can do to help!

Luckily eventually two guys stepped forward who are willing to put it on the table. So maybe you can find someone that will put yours forward also?

:-)

on this issue.

The Holt bill is flawed but it would have definitely been a positive step in the right direction. I'm in Connecticut and the bill would have made our audit process stronger.

However, the biggest advantage of the bill would be in states like Georgia and Maryland that are 100% paperless DRE. As in TN, the cost of retrofitting the DRE's with paper could persuade some states to switch to Opscan since the long term cost would be less for a more reliable system. It would also give elected officials who purchased the DREs cover to switch to Opscan without having to admit their original mistake.

States that would have retrofitted the DREs would probably have experienced so many logistical problems there would be a grassroot effort among election workers to scrap the DREs. Either way it would be a positive step forward.

Of course this Senate bill is better if it simply bans DREs and it gets passed. However, that remains to be seen.

BTW, I admire all you have done to bring attention to election reform and it is kinda sad to see so many like minded, good people, argue over tactics. We have to remember we are all on the same team and not get personal.

And just FYI, a DRE *without* a paper trail, is better than one with one in my opinion.

At least you know what you don't know. Elsewhere in the thread I go into more details to back that reasoning up. Too late at night to re-type 'em here though.

All this about activists passing on PFAW lies is just justification for behavior that can't be justified. Certainly doesn't compare to the misinformation passed on by the people who were so vocally leading the anti-HR811 movement. Some of the misleads and rebuttals can be found by searching for threads I've posted on.

If you are able to cite any "misinformation", that *I* have ever posted in regard to the Holt bill, I hope you will share it. I am aware of none.

Beyond that, I cannot, and will not, speak for others who are either for or against the bill. I represent nobody but myself.

Tryin' to keep a brother down...