Hillary 2004: "Without paper, voting machines could be programmed to help GOP steal elections" [View all]

[Amaryllis]

Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Bob Graham co-sponsored a bill to require paper prior to the 2004 election because they saw the writing on the wall This is an excellent article that lays out all the problems and controversy around the introduction of paperless DREs.

I read this August of 2004 and knew then it was going to be stolen, along with a lot of other DUers. Now finally we have NYT publishing a video of a voting machine hack by a cyber security expert.
See https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210459183

It has been exceedingly difficult to get attention on this issue. Verified Voting has worked tirelessly since before the 2004 election and it was through their efforts that the NYT piece happened.


The Nation
How They Could Steal the Election This Time
Electronic counts, unaudited touch-screen ballots, enhance opportunities for fraud.
By Ronnie Dugger
July 29, 2004


In the US Senate seven Democrats and the one Independent are co-sponsoring a bill by Senators Bob Graham and Hillary Clinton to require paper trails on DREs by November, with a loophole for jurisdictions whose officials deem it to be technologically impossible. Clinton told the press that without a voter-verified paper trail GOP-leaning corporations might program voting machines to help Republicans steal elections [see sidebar, page 16]. In an interview in his hideaway office in the Capitol, Graham told me that he regards his and Clinton’s bill as so obviously needed that it’s “a no-brainer.” The absence of a paper trail on the DREs could endanger “the legitimacy” of November’s election, Graham said.

New Jersey Democrat Rush Holt introduced a House bill more than a year ago requiring a paper trail on DREs. It has 149 co-sponsors, including a few prominent Republicans. Holt says, “The verification has to be something that the voter herself or himself has to do”; without that, “we will never have a truly secure election.” Holt’s bill has opened up a partisan divide in the House. The chairman of the committee to which his bill is assigned, Ohio Republican Bob Ney, informed Holt that he is against the bill and would not allow a hearing on it. A few days later Graham and Holt wrote their fellow members of Congress that “without an independent, voter-verified paper trail, we will be able only to guess whether votes are accurately counted.” Last month Ney relented and scheduled two hearings. Holt plans to offer his bill as an amendment to the Treasury appropriation after Congress returns from its August recess. Graham is still mulling his strategy.

Much more:
https://www.thenation.com/article/how-they-could-steal-election-time/

And of course we know that much more than a paper trail is needed, but the point is a lot of people were on it way back then and trying to do something about it.