Reply #13: Update just now on numbers, 45,000. Further explanation.

[madfloridian]

www.blogforamerica.com
What Counting Every Vote Means
Less than 16 hours after Governor Dean sent a message to the grassroots calling for accountability in voting systems, over 45,000 Americans have signed the petition to demand verified voting this November.

But what does verified voting mean, and how do we get there? David Dill, an expert on e-voting who has a special op-ed on democracyforamerica.com today, writes that steps can be taken at both the federal and state level.

At the federal level, two similar pieces of legislation are pending right now -- one in the House (H.R. 2239) and one in the Senate (S. 1980).

This legislation, introduced by Rush Holt (D-NJ) in the House and Bob Graham (D-FL) in the Senate, is called the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act. According to the Congressional Research Service the act:

Revises audit capacity requirements to require the voting system to produce a voter-verified paper record suitable for a manual audit equivalent or superior to that of a paper ballot box system.

Accelerates the deadline for compliance with voting systems standards from January 1, 2006, to the regularly scheduled November 2004 general Federal election.


Requires each State and jurisdiction unable to meet such deadline to receive a paper voting system at expense ... for use in the November 2004 general election.


Directs the to: (1) conduct manual mandatory surprise recounts of the voter-verified records of each election for Federal office (and, at State or local option, of elections for State and local office) in .5 percent of the jurisdictions in each State and .5 percent of the overseas jurisdictions ... and (2) promptly publish the results of those recounts.
The House version has 141 co-sponsors, but hasn't been allowed out of Republican Bob Ney of Ohio's House Administration committee.

Ohio will be a battleground state this November, and Ney represents the 18th Congressional district. Guess whose corporate headquarters are just next door in the 16th?

That's right -- Diebold, the largest manufacturer of of electronic voting machines whose boss is a major donor to the Bush campaign and has said he is committed to delivering Ohio for George Bush.

In the Senate, the bill is being held up in the powerful Committee on Rules and Administration, led by the infamous Trent Lott (R-MS). (That chairmanship was his "demotion" for remarks suggesting that we wouldn't have had "all these problems" over the years had we elected a segregationist president in 1948.)

This legislation or something like it must be enacted in time to provide verifiable voting systems in time for November. Sign the petition calling for accountability, and tell your friends that this time, we're going to count every vote.

Posted by Joe Rospars at 02:32 PM