GOP Urges Investigation of Voting Machine Performance

ABC News ^ | January 10, 2004

[GregD]

Hello. I’m the webmaster of www.verifiedvoting.org.

I’m a Democrat, and you folks presumably will want to flame me on that point alone. But if you would bear with me, perhaps we could avoid that. I need to talk about an issue that affects all of us, and I am not here to pick a fight. I need your help.

VerifiedVoting.org is NOT about conspiracy theory. We are NOT about screaming about “Wally O’Dell delivering the votes to GWB”, but I do have to admit that his remarks were about as ill-conceived as they might have possibly been, and have made it a lot easier to recruit activists to this issue from certain segments of our population. And we certainly are NOT about “one party or the other is trying to rig the machines or steal an election.”

What we ARE about is looking at this situation from a non-partisan, academic, computer-science perspective. Our goal is to see that legislation and procedures are established and enforced to make sure that elections are counted properly; them may the “real” winner prevail, and we can all rest assured that the win was indeed valid and fair.

OK, so let’s frame the situation: we have systems which run proprietary code that nobody gets to look at. At the certification stage there is no organized code review, at the development level there are no standards that have to be met. As such, the certification process appears to be completely lame. When I developed mission-critical applications for a major international retailer, we had team walkthroughs that senior members of the tech staff participated in. Each line of code was inspected, each module carefully discussed. So when you look at the observations of the Johns Hopkins study http://avirubin.com/vote/, along with other studies, it is clear that the Diebold code completely sucked but that it was not rejected by the ITA. (Sure, the code that was reviewed by Rubin was not current at the time of the review, but it was likely “current code” at an earlier point, and the certification process has NOT substantially improved since then.) Why did this get past the ITA? Because they (the ITA) don’t get to see the code – all they do is run some (undisclosed to the public) tests, give it a kiss and tell it “ya look pretty, have a nice day… See ya…” If I presented that crap to a senior manager in my former shop, I’d get canned – plain and simple. Boom, outta there, have a nice life…

So, we have these systems running secret application code that stores our votes, our precious and irreplaceable votes, without so much as an audit trail. Buy gas? Get a receipt. Buy food? Get a receipt. Get cash or make an ATM deposit? Damn right we get a receipt! Our vote is more valuable than any of those things, and do the machines print anything that allows verification of our votes? Nope, sorry – don’t think so… What? And with no audit trail, be that paper or whatever other technology might be is verifiable in the future, there is no means of verifying the results of an election. If the computer malfunctions, we can’t prove it. If a bug creeps in, we won’t know. Can we do a recount? Absolutely not – all we can do is re-print the same totals that were questioned in the first place.

A common arguement that frequently comes up is related to cost. My response is "what is the price of democracy". Also, if the vendors want the business, make them find a way to build that into the product at a reasonable price. They stand to sell tens (hundreds?) of thousands of these at around $5k-6k a pop. And in San Diego, CA one vendor already committed to throw them in for free. So as far as I'm concerned, forget the cost question - it just does not seem to apply.

Is this a partisan issue, from one side or the other? Not the last time I checked, although some would like to frame it that way… VerifiedVoting.org refuses to – it simply is NOT a partisan issue…

Has this caused problems in elections? Yes, for both parties, in recent state elections we have problems in (at least) Maryland, Virginia and (of all places) Broward County Florida...

Broward (just in the past week or so) is a total meltdown. They had a single race in which 7 Republicans were seeking a state legislative seat. 134 votes were not counted by the touchscreen machines. The race was won by 12 votes, well under the .25 percent level for a mandatory recount (state law). But you cannot recount the vote with paperless touchscreen systems. They are not designed for that.

A number of these instances are listed here: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article_text.asp?articleid=997

So that’s the issue – we have these machines running programs that are NOT REQUIRED to achieve the sort of levels of quality control expectations or scrutiny that any corporate mission-critical software application currently demands, the security on the systems appears to be TOTALLY out of control, yet this is how we are supposed to run our democracy. This just is not right!

It gets worse... We have procedures that are not being followed. How do we know? Because people made a big enough stink that California decided to audit Diebold in 17 counties. (In case you don’t know, all hardware / firmware / software needs to be certified at the Federal level, assigned a NASED number, then approved by the State.) So they run an audit and what percentage of the randomly selected systems are in compliance? NONE! ZIP! NADA! Whose fault? Not sure yet, we will start to determine this on January 15 when the VSP meets again – but it looks like Diebold breached the public trust by supplying (or installing) software that was not certified, and the counties allowed the installation of non-compliant code (or installed it and didn’t check to make sure it was good to go.) http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article_text.asp?articleid=978

So what do we do about it? Well, thousands of our fellow Americans have spent the past 6 months (or more) calling Congressmen and asking them to support HR2239. That bill is ok, could be stronger, but it will have to do for now – time is running out. Frankly it would be nice if there was a stronger automatic recount (right now it calls for .5 percent, and that really needs to go up, just to make sure these beasts aren’t hosed.) It would be nice to boost this in conference committee, assuming we get that far, and before the bills become law.

Currently, we’re looking at just under 100 Democrat cosponsors and 3 or 4 Republicans. I’m sorry, but I really don’t understand those numbers. I’m glad we have a few Republicans that have joined in agreeing that a fairly counted election really still is the core of America’s democracy. But we need more, and that’s why I am here. I need your help, and I need it pronto please…

How can you help? Call your Congressmen (ask for their support of HR2239) and Senators (ask for support of S1980 which is a duplicate of HR2239). Help us get organizations to endorse this important legislation. Here are organizations that already stand behind these important bills: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/endorsers_s1980.asp

There are other action items on our site. I beg you – in respect for what our forefathers left for us – please help us get this done and protect the core of our democracy.

Here is what your own people are saying:
-------------------------------------------------------------

Back in August, lelio said
“I'm more scared as Diebold's engineering staff sounds like a bunch of clowns. An MS Access database on Windows 98? Are they asking to be hacked into?” He referred to this story. I completely agree with him.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm

And in http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/973667/posts, Timesink said:
There is little question, though, that we can never totally trust the results of any election conducted via computerized voting, and such machines should not be allowed to be used (and indeed, I give it less than ten years until they start being outlawed state by state as various scandals pop up, real or imagined). For all the mess that Florida 2000 turned out to be, at least we had actual physical ballots to deal with. The optimal solution, of course, would be going back to something along the lines of the old standards: Paper ballots in sealed boxes; monitors from both parties (and anyone else that wants to watch) at every precinct; multiple police officers riding along as ballot boxes are delivered to the county courthouse; all boxes opened and all votes counted in front of cameras from the news media, local government and any public citizens that wished to make their own records ... along with laws requiring proof of identity in order to vote
-------------------------------------------------------------

Whoever lelio and Timesink are, I’m with you 100 percent. How can we TOTALLY trust these systems, simply looking at it from the programming perspective? Programmers make mistakes, and with the current certification procedures, those mistakes will NOT all get caught. You would be amazed if you looked at the modification logs and bug lists for the Diebold stuff. These are NOT simple programs, and complicated programs are prone to error.

The only practical solution is to demand visibility into the programs, a verification procedure that allows each citizen to check their vote, and a robust automatic (random) recount to make certain that there is no program errors, and no fraud (on EITHER side).

Help us get this done – Please! Come to our site, have a look, and write to us if you have comments or questions.

www.verifiedvoting.org

[sauropod]

"Has this caused problems in elections? Yes, for both parties, in recent state elections we have problems in (at least) Maryland, Virginia and (of all places) Broward County Florida..."

Hell, we always have voting problems in the People's Republic.

Like when Parris the First held a voter registration drive in Greenmount Cemetary.... Vote early and vote often.

[cmsgop]

First Post?

[sauropod]

Timesink is a frequent poster to this site. Lelio less so.

[Mark]

It sounds like you don't have one of our secret VRWC decoder rings, but I'm sure you will get a lot of opinions about this subject from here.

[GregD]

Yes, first post.

I am tremendously concerned about this voting issue, and am unprepared to stand by and watch this happen to our great Nation. Like I introduced, I'm a Dem. As such, there may be things that this community and I would disagree upon. I'm really not here to debate those issues, or to have a fight. On other issues we may passionately agree. One example, I hope, is patriotism. I love this Country, the opportunities it provides, and I do not want our elections to be placed at risk due to poor implementations of technology.

My team and many others have been expressing deep concern about these systems for months, without tangible evidence (hosed elections) to point to. Now we have a small handfull that we DO know about, and these have occurred in November and January Due to the fundamental problem of this issue, the lack of proof in most cases (one way or the other), we are now really concerned about how many election problems we DO NOT know about.

Many people, engaged in their partisan alienation toward those across the aisle, try to paint this as a partisan issue. But now that elections are underway, we are seeing multiple cases of what we warned about, and they are affecting both parties.

I come here in peace, and in hope that I can engage people who can look at this, recognize that we ALL stand to lose if this gets out of control, and ask for your help.

[backhoe]

-The Vote Fraud Archives--

[goodnesswins]

"I love this Country, the opportunities it provides, and I do not want our elections to be placed at risk due to poor implementations of technology."

Soooo....are you a Zell Miller/Ed Koch Democrat? or a Howie Dean/Al Gore Democrat?

[goodnesswins]

Soooo....are you a Zell Miller/Ed Koch Democrat? or a Howie Dean/Al Gore Democrat?

[goodnesswins]

OOOPPS...sorry about the computer burp.

[GregD]

Thanks for the link. I'll look it over. What I would say is that voter fraud is theft at a grand scale. It is theft against all Americans. Whether it has come to be recognized part of our society or not, I hope we can agree that theft of any form is inappropriate in civil society.

It is also apparent that both parties, the Democrats and Republicans have both been guilty of electon fraud. I think it is sad that has taken place, and simply reflects a breakdown of moral values due to greed. I have no desire to debate which party did it more or not, and it is unlikely that any of you (and certainly nobody I know) ever participated in it.

These electronic systems could help make that easier, for whoever controls them. We, as Americans, find ourselves at a point where we can make a stand against that breakdown.

I'm here in hopes of finding people who will stand with me and oppose unverifiable elections.

[antaresequity]

I just don't get it. I code in several languages so I know a little about coding in general.

Creating an application to add up a users choices is as basic as a first level computer programming extra credit problem.

The user selects his values, submits them, is given a chance to verify them, and they are recorded on a data base.

At the same time a scantron quality receipt is submitted in triplicate. One for the voter, one for a mutually selected independent master to verify on classic scantron equipment, and the third to be kept by the vote tally folks.

Whats the friggin problem with this?

Why is this so difficult?

The scantron receipts should verify exactly what the vote tally folks have as a total. Computers are black and white, off and on.

If any questions arise, the voters could participate in a sampling. 1000 thousand random voters are selected and anonymously offer up copies of thier barcoded receipts. The vote tally people are asked to produce the results for these 1000 receipts based on a collection of barcodes cast against the data base.

If they don't match...then the investigation begins.

[GregD]

Honestly, I don't want to talk about what "brand of Democrat" I prefer. I'm not here to debate my politics or yours. (And candidly, I don't think there are many politicians that are worth their weight. I'll make an exception for McCain, who has earned my respect.) You have a right to your views, and I retain my own. I live an honest lifestyle, own a successful web development business (which I have essentially abandoned to help with this campaign), own my home, and have never needed to accept welfare or unemployment.

I'd really appreciate if we could restrict the conversation to electronic voting - and to discuss how we might form an alliance with any of you. We really need your support.

[Mark]

If every ballot has a number, couldnt a voter go to the internet and read the results using only that number. Then if it looks wrong, complain. It should match your receipt as to who/what you voted for.

[Vermonter]

This is an issue I've been concerned about ever since the motor voter act first came into being.

The federal government has, be decree, decided that everything the states had been doing for years was suddenly suspect and could only be corrected using a big government solution argued out in Washington and then settled with some sort of compromise.

The electronic voting machine is the latest fiasco to arise out of this and is subject to all sorts of abuse.

Let's keep the discussion about the topic at hand and give GregD the benefit of the doubt that he's here over a shared concern

[Vermonter]

be decree = by decree ;-)

[Wife of D28Man]

God bless you. Yes indeedy we need an audit trail. My husband has always said that we'll do without paper in the office when we do without it in the john - and for the same reason. As long as we continue to mess up, paper will never be obsolete.

[Mark]

This site is a conservative site, but you are with others who are closely in agreement. A little teasing is always around here. If you stick around and actually read those links and other articles, hey, you might be a Republican in a few months. Welcome.

[kingu]

Ooh, a Zot in the making.

[Gritty]

BTTT

[conservativecorner]

You were recently hacked. The bottom line is that you promote a product/software that is not yet ready for market. Quit whining about your problems, and roll up your sleeves and fix them. No free lunch is a Republican/Conservative theme.

[goodnesswins]

Have you ever spoken with the woman in Renton, WA who is very much into this, too, if I understand what your true intentions are?

[truthandjustice1]

"Ooh, a Zot in the making"

Uh, why?

[Mark]

Oh, one additional thingy. We do expect all military votes to be counted also.

BTT (bump to the top)

[goodnesswins]

And, on another note, the harder it is to vote, the better, as far as I'm concerned. We've made voting WAY to easy in this country. I'm for going back to the get your tail end to the local school and vote....unless you are out of town or ill. Soooo....I'm for putting roadblocks up in front of "internet" or "electronic" as much as possible. Motor voter registration is a fraud, already. I'd like to see the registration system get cleaned up before we go adding on ANOTHER system.

[Sidebar Moderator]

Ooh, a Zot in the making.

Not likely

[chiller]

bttt

[kingu]

"Ooh, a Zot in the making" Uh why?

Actually, I was wrong in terminology. It should be a pulled thread.

GOP Urges Investigation of Voting Machine Performance is the title of the article that is referenced, but the thread starts with a vanity. That vanity is there to promote his website. The referenced article isn't part of the thread.

A shame, because he makes some great points, but if you're going to post your own vanity, just post your own vanity, and don't hide it.

[RaceBannon]

Who have you discussed this with in your congressional district?

Have you written your senators? Congresscritters? The local Newspaper?

[truthandjustice1]

"A shame, because he makes some great points, but if you're going to post your own vanity, just post your own vanity, and don't hide it."

Understand.

[lepton]

I’m a Democrat, and you folks presumably will want to flame me on that point alone.

Only to amuse ourselves. There happen to be a fair number of Democrats, and "Other"s here.

If you're legit and sane, and make a decent argument you'll find people to discuss most issues.

[gitmo]

This was a very good post. I don't see how the states could purchase such mission-critical applications without some certicficate of security and QA. We should insist on audit capabilities and transaction tracing.

I also think we need better verification of voters. Having worked at voting precincts in the past, I know for a fact I could have stuffed my ballot boxes to the brim and no one would have known a thing.

FReepers: if we don't insist on these audits up front we're going to be trying to close the barn doors while we still have one or two head of livestock left. The few machines I've seen were simple to manipulate and were error-prone as well. Even without a hacker we could have botched elections on our hands.

We like to poke barbs at the democrats, but let's not run this guy off. His points are very timely and very prescient.

[Sidebar Moderator]

It should be a pulled thread.

Not likely either

This thread does not look to the moderators like most self-promoting threads do. We feel the poster has brought in a legitimate topic for discussion and that he is not the typical leftist troll or disruptor. Should we be proven wrong on this, appropriate action will follow.

For now, let's see if those on both sides of the political spectrum can work toward getting this shared problem corrected.

Thanks for your cooperation

[ThanhPhero]

I am also quite concerned about computerized voting. It's like giving the Daley machine access to voting everywhere. Or conceivably a techie of Republican(rare in my experience) bent and in the right position could move 1.5% of the vote everywhere.

With the butterfly ballots and the voting machines, vote manipulation is a task for armies of operatives. Votes have to be physically changed by throwing away ballots or pushing rods through piles of ballots, etc.It is alocal thing and not amenable to a national effort. With the computers it only takes one manipulator and the evidence that always exists even when ignored by the press and the law, i.e. vote counters in the trunk of an operative's car, boxes of ballots in someone's garage, multiple signatures, signatures of dead people, v.v., does not exist at all in computer voting fraud. It can be a couple of lines of code that no one but the programmer can see. Maybe a hacker can do the deed and the damage may be visible but there is no way to rectify the result or even to know what the damage was. As voting migrates to the internet I can't see how any real control can be exerted to keep it honest at all.

Butterfly ballots are far superior in respect of actual fraud and political machines will figure out how to rip off an election no matter what. It will just be so much harder to get caught with computer voting. It tempts the big boys to get into it because the problem can ultimately be a national program rather than many local problems.

The temptation is to think that this Democrat is just trying to slide something over on the Republicans by trying to get back the old methods used so profitibly by the Crat big citymachines but the truth is that there are many Crats who are truly convinced that the vote in Broward/Dade 2000 was rigged by Republicans and they think W will use the opportunity to screw the Crats.

Few Democrats are capable of connecting results with actually visible and obvious causes and they do think that the 5 Republicans in Dade managed to steal the election. I know people like that, intelligent people(as measured by IQ but hey....).

[jsbankston]

Nice Job. Voter Fraud is fraud no matter which party perpetrates the fraud. Perhaps each party should hire its own code writers to read the code for every voting machine and mandate that no machine can be used until both code writers sign off on each machine. This is very much the same standard done with a standard paper or punch card ballot. Do yo Recall Palm Beach in 2000 when the Dem signed of on an allegedly flawed ballot?

As long as both parties play by the rules we should be okay.

[Krodg]

My team and many others have been expressing deep concern about these systems for months, without tangible evidence (hosed elections) to point to.

Ah yes...I've read your many rants at DU about Diebold. The problem with the machines is that 'Republicans' own the companies.

Has it ever entered your mind that every company has a leader and as shocking as it is....every leader is a person with a right to vote?? I suppose you would be happy if all voting machines came from companies controled by Democrats? But what would you do if a Democrat designed a ballot that their voters couldn't understand....cry foul?

[GregD]

Hello antaresequity

What you are saying is the same thing I was thinking until I became buried in this issue.

When you start looking at elections, it is amazing (I'm stunned frankly) at how much comes up. Every freaking state (and sometimes at a county level) have different rules. And the applications that are used to run elections need to be configurable by civil servants who may or may not have a high degree of IT familiarity.

There are a couple points to consider.

Scanned ballots are probably a lot easier to deal with, in terms of the tabulation software, and thankfully offer a paper document that can be re-scanned if necessary. That's a good thing.

But there is an interface that allows the elections staff to configure the machine/ballots for different races, with X number of candidates, can you vote for one (only) or for more than one... Then you have to accomodate propositions and such.

The scanner needs to be configured to know where to "look for" the voters mark, and what the marks indicate, based on the layout of any particular election's ballot. (You should have seen the one for the CA Recall - it was brutal.) The software has to know if an undervote or an overvote has occurred.

So it actually becomes a robust application to configure the scanner, count/verify the ballots at the precinct, and finally consolidate the totals at the county level.

Yeah, not rocket science, but also not as straight-forward as it would seem on its face.

Then we get to the touch screen systems. The Diebold system runs on Windows CE. The user has to be able to "paint" the screen for each election, defining different races and everything else, configure how each race works (as in 1 or more votes are valid). My impression is that this makes for a very complex application when done properly, and (at least) Diebold has left "properly" wide open for curiosity and challenge...

Speaking of CE, Jim March discovered that Diebold was hiding the fact that it was not COTS (Commercial Out of The box Software), and they appear to have acted to avoid having that software certified. In case your are unfamiliar with Jim, he is a California lobbyist for "Concealed Carry Permits" - not exactly what you would call a flaming liberal - he is a staunch conservative and a good friend. Here is a page in his site where he discusses the CE problem http://www.equalccw.com/sscomments2.html

So anyhow, I get your point, but the software simply is not simple... Here is a list of bugs fixed in just one release of their code: http://www.countthevote.org/buglist.htm

BTW, if you have not followed the Diebold e-mail discussion, check this series of thread at www.blackboxvoting.org
http://tinyurl.com/2rzqv

The big difference with scanned ballots versus touchscreen is that most of the touchscreens presently have no printed "ballot" or anything else that serves for a recount. And without that, elections are getting hosed: not a theory, but a real and growing fact.

Please help us stop this threat to democracy.

[GATOR NAVY]

Ooh, a Zot in the making.

Grow up.

[lepton]

GOP Urges Investigation of Voting Machine Performance

Saturday January 10, 2004 6:29am

Fairfax (AP) - Fairfax County (website - news) Republicans are urging the county to investigate the what they call the poor performance of high-tech voting machines last November.

A report from the county G-O-P committee calls the touch-screen voting machines used in local elections "a failure," and says and county officials weren't prepared to deal with the problems.

The party is also recommending state regulations that would require localities with the new equipment to follow stringent procedures.

The machines were supposed to speed up the reporting process, but instead they produced one of the slowest vote counts in recent history. Republicans are also angry that election officials took ten machines that crashed to the county government center for repairs.

[IGOTMINE]

BTT

I'd like to get my hands on the software the Dems use to reanimate the dead every election.

[kingu]

I have always taken the position that I want to see and verify the ballot that goes into the box before I believe my vote has been registered. The 'inkavote' system we've been inflicted with in California makes that harder -- the old punch card was infinitely easier to tell if you'd marked the right number since the number on the ballot form matched the numbers next to the holes. 'inkavote' covers the number, which I really don't like.

With these electronic machines, I don't have a ballot to check over. I have a computer screen that might or might not reflect what my intention was. It doesn't print out a ballot to put into the box; instead it cheerfully assures me that my vote will be counted.

I'm all for machines for making voting easier, but they should print a ballot which is what is counted for the results of the election. Go ahead and use the electronic record for 'instant trends' as soon as the polls close, but until verification of the paper ballots is made, the election should not be considered over.

How many people have had a dispute with the bank over an ATM, especially in the first decade of their use? Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? I'm not interested in our political process being a guinea pig to iron out the bugs.

[Darksheare]

Well, short form: As long as there is political power, and the powerhungry, no matter what voting system we use short of a George Orwellian universe- there will always be the element of shenanigans in voting.
Sad, sick, and horrible.
The only real defense is if honest people on both sides shout down and question anything out of the ordinary and irregular, I.e. violating voting law and such.

Unfortunately, I live in NY state, and some of the people I speak to that ID themselves as 'Democrats' state that they "MUST win through ANY means necessary."
I reminded them of Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed.
The deplorable philosophy of the end justifying the means and such.

*Sighs*
Just keep your eyes open and keep your conscience clear.
So far, I haven't seen any reason to be 'upset' with you.
You've presented this pretty well. (I will be honest, there have been some that posted here specifically to be jerks. But, such is life.)
Thanks for posting.
Will see you around.

[GregD]

I think you are talking about www.VoteHere.com who was hacked. They are a vendor.

My site is www.VerifiedVoting.org and we are not looking for free anything (other than maybe free printers if these damn vendors want to sell their stinking systems and have them considered adequate by the end-users - we voters.)

[Revel]

http://www.americanfreepress.net/08_25_03/Concerns_Over/concerns_over.html

[Cacique]

BTT

[Revel]

Personally I think the punch ballots were not so bad in one aspect. If you can't follow instructions or understand English then your vote should not count. People with a legitimate physical handicap should be eligible for help of course.

[lepton]

Rep. Rush Holt Introduces Legislation to Require All Voting Machines To Produce A Voter-Verified Paper Trail

H.R.2239 Summary and Status

S.1980 Summary and Status

---

Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (Introduced in House)

HR 2239 IH

108th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 2239

To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy under title III of such Act, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

May 22, 2003

Mr. HOLT introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on House Administration

---

A BILL

To amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy under title III of such Act, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003'.

SEC. 2. EXTENSION OF TIME PROVIDED FOR STATES TO REQUEST PAYMENTS UNDER TITLE I.

(a) PAYMENTS FOR ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE ADMINISTRATION OF ELECTIONS- Section 101(a) of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (42 U.S.C. 15301(a)) is amended by striking `not later than 6 months after the date of the enactment of this Act' and inserting `not later than the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November 2003'.

(b) PAYMENTS FOR REPLACEMENT OF PUNCH CARD OR LEVER VOTING MACHINES- Section 102(b)(1) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 15301(b)(1)) is amended by striking `not later than the date that is 6 months after the date of the enactment of this Act' and inserting `not later than the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November 2003'.

(c) EXTENSION OF PERIOD OF AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS-

(1) IN GENERAL- Section 104(a) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 15304(a)) is amended by striking `$650,000,000' and inserting `an aggregate amount of $650,000,000 for fiscal years 2003 and 2004'.

(2) DATE FOR TRANSFER TO ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION OF UNOBLIGATED FUNDS- Section 104(c)(2)(B) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 15304(c)(2)(B)) is amended by striking `September 1, 2003' and inserting `January 1, 2004'.

(d) REQUIREMENT TO DEPLOY INTERIM MEASURE IF WAIVER REQUESTED- Section 102(a)(3)(B) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 15301(a)(3)(B)) is amended by striking the period at the end and inserting the following: `, except that any State requesting any such waiver shall accept and implement a paper system for use on an interim basis as provided in section 5(b) of the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 in time for use in the November 2004 general election.'.

SEC. 3. REPEAL OF EXEMPTION OF ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION FROM CERTAIN GOVERNMENT CONTRACTING REQUIREMENTS.

(a) IN GENERAL- Section 205 of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (42 U.S.C. 15325) is amended by striking subsection (e).

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE- The amendment made by subsection (a) shall apply with respect to contracts entered into by the Election Assistance Commission on or after the date of the enactment of this Act.

SEC. 4. PROMOTING ACCURACY, INTEGRITY, AND SECURITY THROUGH VOTER-VERIFIED PERMANENT RECORD OR HARD COPY.

(a) IN GENERAL- Section 301(a)(2) of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (42 U.S.C. 15481(a)(2)) is amended to read as follows:

`(2) VOTER-VERIFICATION AND AUDIT CAPACITY-

`(A) VOTER-VERIFICATION IN GENERAL- The voting system shall produce a voter-verified paper record suitable for a manual audit equivalent or superior to that of a paper ballot box system, as further specified in subparagraph (B).

`(B) MANUAL AUDIT CAPACITY-

`(i) The voting system shall produce a permanent paper record, each individual paper record of which shall be made available for inspection and verification by the voter at the time the vote is cast, and preserved within the polling place in the manner in which all other paper ballots are preserved within the polling place on Election Day for later use in any manual audit.

`(ii) The voting system shall provide the voter with an opportunity to correct any error made by the system before the permanent record is preserved for use in any manual audit.

`(iii) The voter verified paper record produced under subparagraph (A) and this subparagraph shall be available as an official record and shall be the official record used for any recount conducted with respect to any election in which the system is used.

`(C) SOFTWARE AND MODEMS-

`(i) No voting system shall at any time contain or use undisclosed software. Any voting system containing or using software shall disclose the source code of that software to the Commission, and the Commission shall make that source code available for inspection upon request to any citizen.

`(ii) No voting system shall contain any wireless communication device at all.

`(iii) All software and hardware used in any electronic voting system shall be certified by laboratories accredited by the

Commission as meeting the requirements of clauses (i) and (ii).'.

(b) VOTER VERIFICATION OF RESULTS FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES- Section 301(a)(3) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 15481(a)(3) is amended--

(1) in the heading, by inserting `AND VOTER-VERIFICATION OF RESULTS' after `ACCESSIBILITY';

(2) in subparagraph (B), by striking `; and' and inserting the following: `, and such voting system shall provide a mechanism for voter-verification of results which separates the function of vote generation from the function of vote casting in a manner analogous to that described in section 4 with respect to the separation of paper ballot generation and paper ballot verification and preservation, but does not require the use of paper.';

(3) by amending subparagraph (C) to read as follows:

`(C) The equipment deployed in accordance with subparagraph (B) shall meet the voting system standards for disability access and voter-verification of results as outlined in this paragraph in accordance with the deadline set forth in section 5(a), provided that if it does not and an interim paper system is deployed in accordance with section 5(b), disabled voters shall have the option of using the interim paper system with the assistance of an aide of the voter's personal selection or using the voting system otherwise put in place for use by disabled voters at the time in question in accordance with the Help America Vote Act of 2002, as in effect prior to the enactment of this Act, except that the deadline set forth in section 301(a)(3)(C) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 15481(a)(3)(C)) is moved forward from January 1, 2007, to January 1, 2006.'; and

(4) by adding at the end the following new subparagraph:

`(D) Election officials shall be instructed in the rights of the disabled to vote with the assistance of an aide of their selection under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.'.

(c) SPECIFIC, DELINEATED REQUIREMENT OF STUDY, TESTING, AND DEVELOPMENT OF BEST PRACTICES- In addition to any other requirements under the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the Election Assistance Commission shall study, test, and develop best practices to enhance accessibility and voter-verification mechanisms for disabled voters.

SEC. 5. CHANGE IN DEADLINE FOR COMPLIANCE WITH STANDARDS.

(a) IN GENERAL- Section 301(d) of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (42 U.S.C. 15481(d)) is amended by striking `on and after January 1, 2006' and inserting `in time for elections for Federal office beginning with the regularly scheduled general election to be held in November 2004'.

(b) INTERIM PAPER SYSTEM- Each State and jurisdiction that certifies in the manner described in section 102(a)(3)(B) that it shall be unable to comply with the requirements of section 301 in time for the regularly scheduled general election for Federal office to be held in November 2004 shall receive a paper voting system, based on paper systems in use in the jurisdiction, if any, at the expense of the Commission that shall be deemed compliant with section 301 by the Commission for use in the November 2004 general elections.

SEC. 6. REQUIREMENT FOR FEDERAL CERTIFICATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL SECURITY OF VOTER REGISTRATION LISTS.

Section 303(a)(3) of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (42 U.S.C. 15483(a)(3)) is amended by striking the period at the end and inserting the following: `, as certified by the Commission.'.

SEC. 7. REQUIREMENT FOR MANDATORY RECOUNTS.

The Election Assistance Commission shall conduct manual mandatory surprise recounts of the voter-verified records of each election for Federal office (and, at the option of the State or jurisdiction involved, of elections for State and local office) in .5 percent of the jurisdictions in each State and .5 percent of the overseas jurisdictions in which voter-verified records are preserved in accordance with this section immediately following each general election for Federal office, and shall promptly publish the results of those recounts. The treatment of the results of the recount shall be governed by applicable Federal, State, or local law, except that any individual who is a citizen of the jurisdiction involved may file an appeal with the Commission if the individual believes that such law does not provide a fair remedy.

SEC. 8. EFFECTIVE DATE.

Except as provided in section 3(b), the amendments made by this Act shall take effect as if included in the enactment of the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

[GregD]

I took the time to read some of the posters who you may be referring to. I agree, it was not presented well by some who visited in the past. This issue DEMANDS a non-partisan approach, and that is the manner in which we operate VerifiedVoting.org, and we will offer no less.

I took some time to think about how I wished to approach this, as I sincerely wish the support of those that engage in discussion here, and I DID NOT want to come over here and start a fight. If we fight, and don't win this issue together, then corrupt politics wins the day and we citizens lose.

I completely agree with you, and that is why I am here, that honest people must challenge election violations. We have all seen that, and much greater corruption, and I feel it is time that we make all such criminals accountable - and force all members of our government to comply with the laws that they expect us to observe. Nobody is above the law, and it is time that we all make a stand for what is right. I am sick and tired of corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle.

A good example is that case in Broward County that I referenced. I have no dog in that fight. It was a race between 7 Republicans. The win was by 12 votes, 134 votes were lost (plus a few more because the scanned ballot software failed) and now the county is out of legal compliance since they have no way to conduct the legally mandated recount since the touchscreen systems cannot do that.

So I will emphasize once again, because I'm about to spend the rest of the evening doing some other work, that we need your support. If I have presented my case fairly, if you feel there is grounds on this issue by which we can agree, please come help us. We want you.

How to help? There are action items on the front page of VerifiedVoting.org. We need groups to go see your legislators and DEMAND passage of HR2238 and S1980. We already have bipartisan support, and we need a LOT MORE.

We need groups and organizations to endorse the bills. This list needs to grow significantly before Congress returns to session http://www.verifiedvoting.org/endorsers_s1980.asp By growing that list, in a bipartisan manner, our respective leadership will understand that there is universal concensus and demand for passage of the bills.

If you are in Texas, and can talk to DeLay, please do it right away.

If you are in Ohio, and can talk to Ney, bless your heart. He heads the House Administration Committee, and we need to get HR2239 out of there, onto the House floor, and passed into law.

And if you have ideas to help us, please write to our site so we can speak on the telephone and work together. We are simply a group of concerned citizens, mostly of a technical inclination in terms of our careers (geeks), and we need all the help we can muster.

[Revel]

BTW I do agree with you that Electronic voting without an extreemly good verifyable paper trail is nuts! I think it is the wrong way all together for the most part. There are so many ways to cheat and then have no evidence of the cheating later. We are fools to allow it.

I was thinking that one way to handle this would be to have the votes counted by two diferent software programs running simutaneoulsy. The creators of those softwares being bared by law from talking to one another directly. If at any time the vote counts from each program do not agree then...Investigation time.

[torchthemummy]

Thanks for posting GregD! This is not a question of partisan politics. Everyone wants their vote to count no matter what party. The fact still stands that this system with no "ballot receipt" is a danger for all.

The truth of the matter, without being too partisan, is that voter fraud has been primarily a Democrat Party reality for a very long time. From Daley in Chicago in 1960 to student double-voting and homeless payoffs and Bill Clinton's Voting Card for California immigrants in 2000 to South Dakota Indian reservation registration fraud in 2002 (so many others but I digress.) When voting fraud has come to the fore it is inevitably in primary Democratic voting strong-holds ie. urban areas and is under the auspices of Democrat secretary of states and city and county election supervisors (all contested Florida counties in 2000 were under Democrat control as we know).

That being said I appreciate your candidness and hope that in the spirit of honest competion the end result is indeed a paper trail if the need for a recount ever occurs.

To my fellow Freepers: I didn't read all posts but caught a couple that were proposing Zotting GregD. I think that we should all be able to welcome honest opinion from other views if a basic decorum is observed by all involved. I'm hoping that GregD will stick around, take views he disagrees with in stride while making his own points, some that maybe we need to hear. Any view is palatable when applied through gracefullness. And sometimes preaching to the choir just can be plain boring.