Truthout: Congress Takes One Step Forward on Verifiable Voting

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051007A.shtml

Congress Takes One Step Forward on Verifiable Voting
By Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 10 May 2007

Legislation aimed at overhauling how people vote moved out of a Congressional committee Tuesday. The bill is intended to address problems that have hamstrung recent national elections.

US House Resolution 811 was drafted by Rep. Rush Holt (D-New Jersey) and has 212 current cosponsors. The bill was passed with two amendments by the Committee on House Administration. According to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, it's on a fast track to be voted on by the full House.

The bill is an amendment to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was passed after the debacle in Florida during the 2000 general election. HAVA funded the replacement of old voting systems and gave rise to a new generation of technology-based systems that have been proven untrustworthy. Most notable of these are the Direct Recording Electronic voting systems (DRE), which store electronic records of votes and use those records to tabulate election outcomes. Computer scientists have shown that elections employing these machines are not safe from hackers.

Holt's efforts have come under scrutiny from grass-roots activists and experts who have been deeply involved in election integrity. Many of these activists oppose the Holt legislation because it does not go far enough in ensuring that elections are secure. They seek further citizen oversight and a ban on DRE voting systems. But the bill has supporters in activist circles, including MoveOn.org, Common Cause, and People For the American Way (PFAW). These groups point to the urgency of getting some kind of legislation passed that can be implemented before the 2008 elections.

While the bill does not ban electronic voting machines, it does require that all voting machines include a paper record for auditing purposes. If passed in its current form, the bill would require signs to be hung in polling places reminding voters to check the paper records for errors after they complete their ballots.

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