Rep. Rush Holt's bill, H.R. 811, has passed in committee! BAN ON PAPERLESS EVOTING!!!

[in_cog_ni_to]

and is headed to a vote by the full House next week!!!!! :bounce::bounce: FINALLY this bill is going somewhere! I hope this isn't a dupe post. I haven't seen it in GD. If it is a dupe...I'm sorry, please delete.:)

Here's the email I just received:


Dear MoveOn member,

Congress just made the most significant move ever toward a ban on paperless voting machines. Rep. Rush Holt's bill, H.R. 811, has passed in committee and is headed to a vote by the full House next week.1

The MoveOn petition you signed played a crucial role in the successful committee vote. At the hearing, the Republicans presented dozens of letters from election officials opposed to the bill. But then the Democrats countered by marching in with a printed copy of the MoveOn petition—all 185,000 signatures on 14,000 pages! (You can see a photo to the right.)

But we haven't won yet: Republicans will try to sabotage the bill by tacking on an anti-democratic voter ID requirement. To fight back, our friends at Common Cause have a media strategy to prove voter ID is unnecessary and disenfranchises low-income and elderly voters.

We're aiming to raise $25,000 for Common Cause to get the media coverage we need to ban paperless voting machines. Can you chip in?

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2572&id=10326-6554478-0skIY2&t=2

Republicans are trying to stop the Holt bill with complaints about Democratic voter fraud, even though the Justice Department found virtually none.2 We can debunk the Republicans' bogus arguments by reaching out to newspaper editorial boards, columnists, blogs, and radio talk shows—but pitching the media costs money.

Together, we've made thousands of phone calls to Congress in support of Rep. Holt's ban on paperless voting machines, so Congress knows there's public support. Now we need Common Cause and others to make sure media outlets don't buy Republicans' partisan excuse—and make sure the media cover the need for a ban on paperless electronic voting machines. Reaching out to all the media outlets is expensive work.

Help pass a ban on paperless electronic voting machines. Click here to donate directly to Common Cause:

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2572&id=10326-6554478-0skIY2&t=3

When people like us started raising concerns about paperless electronic voting machines, Congress and D.C. insiders called us crazy. Today, we're making real progress, but we can't let up the pressure.

Thank you for all you do.

–Noah, Adam G., Ilyse, Laura, and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Monday, May 14th, 2007

[IndyOp]

1. This IS fantastic!! Thanks in_cog_ni_to!!

We now need to contact our Congresscritters - House & Senate - and make sure this passes as soon as possible!!

Key points from VoteTrustUSA summary:

The bill requires all voting systems to produce or require the use of a durable voter-verified paper ballot must be used or produced for every vote cast and to allow accessible verification of the paper ballot. Paper ballot is vote of record in all recounts and audits, as a check on electronic tallies except in cases where it can be demonstrated that the integrity of the paper ballot has been compromised. However, the amended bill provides that even if paper ballots have been demonstrated to have been compromised in numbers exceeding the margin of victory, “the electronic tally shall not be used as the exclusive basis for determining the official certified vote tally.”

Jurisdictions that had no voter verified paper ballots at all in 2006 have until November 2008 to meet all of the requirements. Jurisdictions that used any voting system the produced or required the use of a voter verified paper ballot in 2006 (including thermal reel-to-reel systems and accessible systems that used a paper ballot in any manner) will have until the first election in 2010 to meet new requirements for durability and accessible verification.

Significantly, the funding authorization for meeting the new requirements has been increased from $300 million to $1 billion. Additionally a specific ongoing authorization of $100 million annually for the conduct of post-election audits has been added. In the new version of the bill the requirement for the creation of Stat eAudit Boards has been removed and replaced with a requirement that the entity chosen by the State to conduct the audits satisfy the requirements of “independence” set forth in the GAO’s “Government Accounting Standards.”

Any pre-certification recount done instead of an audit must be done by hand count of the paper ballots. It has been expanded to provide that if the recount is not a 100% count, that at least as many ballots be counted, the selection of those ballots be just as random, the recount be just as publicly observable, and the results be published, all as is required of audits. Additionally, audits must be conducted in the place where the ballots are stored and counted after the election, and in the presence of the ballot custodians.

The bill requires routine random manual audits in 3% of the precincts in all Federal elections, and 5% or 10% in very close races, but races in which the winning candidate received 80% of the vote need not be audited.

The required audit percentages have been clarified to be a minimum and states are allowed to developed alternate audit protocols as long as they are deemed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to be equal to or superior to those established by the bill.

The ban on Internet connections has been expanded to include, in addition to devices upon which votes are cast, devices upon which votes are tabulated and ballots are programmed. This will have the effect of prohibiting the connection of election management systems like Diebold’s GEMS or Sequoia’s WinEDS to he Internet.

The requirement that for disclosure of voting system software to any person has been replaced by a requirement that “election-dedicated voting technology” be released to qualified persons who sign non-disclosure agreements protecting intellectual property rights and trade secrets.

Increased public oversight and reporting of testing and certification would be required by the bill, including the establishment of an “arms-length” relationship between test labs and vendors, through the creation of an escrow account into the vendors pay test fees and from which the testing laboratories are paid.

Amended Holt Bill Reported Out of Committee
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2442&Itemid=26

[MadBadger]

2. Nice to see my Congressmen doing something good.

[struggle4progress]

3. Broder in WaPo launched an attack against the Holt bill yesterday

wrapping up with some quotes from Doug Lewis at the Election Center :puke:

See DailyKos for some salient responses to that horseshit:

David Broder Done Pissed Me Off This Time
by trifecta
Sun May 13, 2007 at 09:28:03 AM PDT
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/13/8268/12804

[Gregorian]

4. I called Thompson's office on this today.

They actually took name and address before hanging up. I think they were really listening to us.

There isn't much more important subject in a democracy than voting integrity.

Woo hoo! Now pass it!

[Forkboy]

5. It's a start.

:thumbsup:

[MLFerrell]

6. If this passes a general vote...

And it gets overridden past *'s inevitable veto, the Republican party if FUCKED, with a capital "F".

They've had to steal the last two presidential elections, and the last Congressional election wasn't exactly above-board either. Without their crooked machines, they don't stand a chance, especially since Der Chimperor seems hell-bent on utterly destroying his party from the inside out.

Gee, what a shame for them. The playing field will be level again, instead of leaning on a 20% grade toward the right.

:nopity: