Letter to Jim McDermott 5/31/07

[eridani]

Dear Representative McDermott:

I am contacting you because I do not want HR 811 to be fast-tracked. Our voting system is too important an issue not to allow time for public debate. This bill leaves far too many unacceptable vulnerabilities in our election process.

We urge you NOT to support HR 811 as it presently stands

We must do better than HR 811.

This bill makes SECRET vote counting the de facto federal standsrd and invites, rather than prevents, corruption of our elections.


HR 811 must be modified in the following ways:

1. Paper BALLOTS, not paper trails.
2. Elimination of all touchscreen voting equipment that tallies votes. Touchscreens are acceptable ONLY as an interface for printing auditable paper BALLOTS.
3. No secret vote counting, no secret records, no secret contracts, and no trade secrecy in our public elections. (A major provider of voting machines, Diebold, proudly advertises its OPEN SOURCE software for ATMs. Banks won't stand for Diebold owning their financial data--why should elections departments stand for Diebold owning their elections data?)
4. No control of voting technologies by four White House appointees.
5. No unfunded mandates

Please consider a workable, alternative proposal for essential election reform following this brief outline:

http://www.ElectionDefenseAlliance.org/five_point_proposal


Thank you.