A question for legal minds...

[diva77]

What would it take, legally speaking, to ban computerized voting machines, optical scanners and computerized central tabulators?
Germany banned them. Why can't we?

[Motley13]

1. Up to the states

nt

[marybourg]

2. A law in each state, or 1 federal law

if a constitutional or statutory basis can be found for it.

[diva77]

3. These machines to not seem to meet the burden of proof that our votes are being counted as cast.

Would that qualify as a "constitutional or statutory basis" ?

[marybourg]

7. If you can point to the constitutional

provision, or the statute, that you think they contravene.

[elleng]

4. No problem, 'legally speaking,'

each jurisdiction comes up with it's own approach.

[diva77]

5. So the way to get them banned would be to start with having one jurisdiction deciding to ban them

and then build on that?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. The state legislatures would each have to pass laws banning them.

Germany doesn't work that way - their election system is regulated nationally, while ours is not.

[diva77]

8. It would be nice to have a national "revoke HAVA" law of some sort - any legal possibility of that?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. HAVA never had any teeth anyhow.

All it did was create a clearinghouse and means of compiling data on elections, but it never regulated specifically how elections were conducted. Repealing it could be possible since it's a federal statute, but I don't see how it would make much difference.

[diva77]

11. HAVA is the reason computerized voting machines & computerized voter rolls

have been ushered into the states - if the states accepted HAVA money, then they ended up using it to help purchase the computerized voting machines and also to switching to computerized voter rolls (which have been corrupted by companies such as CrossCheck). It was a devious piece of legislation

[Wounded Bear]

10. There really isn't a lot in the Constitution about voting regulation...

They kind of slipped up on that one.

[MrScorpio]

12. You're going to have a hard time getting rid of them

Because it's generally the lobbyists for the companies which make the voting machines who write the legislation to keep them in service. One should find out who the state legislature critters are that's taking the money from these companies and do one's best to make them see the light.

As was noted, each state writes their own laws. The hardest way to fix this is with a Federal law. With as much deal lock in DC as it is, getting such a bill passed and signed into law would be pretty much impossible. Not to mention the fact of who's in the Oval Office right now.

[diva77]

14. Yes - and I think HAVA was drafted at an ALEC conference - can't seem to find info about this -

must've been scrubbed from the internet, just like the Penn. court ruling in 2007 against DREs - only found it with wayback machine.

...will have to look into state legislators...

[TeeYiYi]

13. I'm thinking, this...

...but then, I'm no legal expert.

TYY