Shredded Paper Trail Bill To Hit House Floor Wednesday
Once called HR 811, but now called Microsoft 811 by some, Representative Rush Holt’s paper trail bill is set for a vote this week in the US House. Some former backers of Holt’s efforts have jumped ship and want you to jump, too.
Many good points of the original bill are gone now:
1. Software disclosure demands got removed. The bill now bars public disclosure of software.
2. Internet connections were banned in the bill last winter, as were any type of wireless connections. Both now suffer from muddled language added in committee.
Here’s the conclusion of Ellen Theisen, an early paper ballot advocate:
In my opinion, the flaws in this bill are more damaging to democracy and our future election process than the good that might come of the minimal safeguards it could provide for our elections in 2008 and beyond. So, far from celebrating that a Holt election reform bill will finally come to the floor for a vote as I might have been back in 2003, or even 2005, I am now filled with sadness. This bill should never be passed as it is currently written.
Others still back the bill. Verified Voting (started by California professor David Dill) needed over 2200 words to explain why it backs the bill in spite of all the negative changes it has undergone this summer. Their closing words are cautionary at best:
The proposed changes to the Committee bill open the door for hundreds of millions to be spent on touch screen equipment and flawed inaccessible printers in 2008 — equipment that would need to be replaced yet again in 2012. We still believe the good in the bill outweighs these changes, but we urge Congress to implement these reasonable corrections as the bill moves forward.
So even the bills backers hope it won’t be enacted without some improvements. Typically the argument goes like this–”Pass this bill, anyway, because the Senate can do better. Then the conference committee will select the best from both bills. We hope.”
Trouble is, there is no better bill that has any legs in the Senate. There are worse bills in the Senate.
Passing what’s still called HR 811 appears to be as risky as defeating it.
September 4th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
If a Senate bill has language that does harm and gets a markup, then verified voting advocates - the whole movement - can pull support. Passing a bill in the Senate will be hard enough, and without the support of any verified voting advocates, it will be next to impossible.
Some bills in the Senate need improvement- but don’t forget about Count Every Vote Act’s excellent voting-system language; given its other provisions, it won’t move, but the Senators who cosponsored it are certainly a sign of hope. And remember how Iowa’s Senate File 369 started? As Senate Study Bill 1104, bill that would add inadequate printers and still make the electronic count the ballot of record! The legislative process can improve bills as well as weaken them as they move forward.
The votes in Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia et al desperately need a voter-verifiable record and audits in 2008. We can’t give up yet.
September 5th, 2007 at 5:13 am
I’d like to highlight another view of HR-811, and why it still maintains a strong base of support, despite some of the conference changes highlighted here.
While it’s true that HR-811 does not provide an air-tight solution to the potential for electronic voting machines to report erroneous polling results, its core purpose, that of a meaningful audit that will catch errant software releases and voting machine models red-handed, is still intact, stronger than it was in Holt’s earlier bills.
Auditing doesn’t prevent fraud, but it will undoubtedly bring it to light. If there’s anywhere near the level of faultiness and/or fraud in these machines as most readers of this publication, myself included, think there is, HR-811 will create the political climate — through mass public awareness of the cancer of electronic voting machines — that proponents of much stronger controls would need in order to have sweeping changes find their way through a largely out-of-touch, influence-drenched Congress.
(My favorite “control”, by the way, is Kucinich-promoted Canadian-style Hand-Count Paper Ballots… I just believe it’s only an audit guarantee such as HR-811 that will pave the way for that kind of sweeping change.)
That’s why HR-811’s supporters are still with it, despite a conference process that seems to have had as many vendors as issue advocates present.