Activists: End Quest For Paper Trails
Two tireless promoters of paper trails have reconsidered. They will no longer work to add paper printers to touchscreen voting machines, saying that the printers are a failure, too.
John Gideon and Ellen Theisen of Voter’s Unite have posted a statement ending their former support for Congressman Rush Holt’s HR 550, the gold standard of paper trail (VVPAT)legislation.
Unfortunately, the implementation of VVPAT is abysmal. The vendors did not take the challenge seriously and have provided inferior, malfunctioning, and hopelessly inadequate technology to add onto the inferior, malfunctioning, and hopelessly inadequate DREs. Federally mandating this failed technology would be a big mistake. We are not alone in this concern. The overall voice we hear now, even from other previous supporters of HR-550, is that the push for VVPAT has served its purpose and, because of the abysmal implementation, should now be dropped.
They are switching their focus to the corporate control of election administration:
Jurisdictions have become so dependent on voting system vendors that vendors now provide ballots, ballot programming, testing services, maintenance services, and even election administration — all without the oversight of the public.
A shining example of this appalling situation can be seen in Delaware County, Indiana, where MicroVote provides the equipment, maintains and services it, programs the ballots, tabulates results, even counts provisional ballots, and has now asked county officials to obtain a release from all candidates saying they will abide by the final results that MicroVote reports.
The statement concludes with ten goals for legislation in the next Congress, including:
1) Remove any requirement for VVPAT. . . .
2) Require disclosed source code for all election equipment . . .
3) Prohibit the direct recording of votes on any medium other than paper. . . .
7) Prohibit the presence of any equipment vendor or vendor technician in the tabulation room, . . .
8) Make it a punishable, federal offense for any technician associated with an election equipment vendor to touch any election equipment or ballots before, during, or after an election . . .