House member wants e-voting paper trail

[deadparrot]

WASHINGTON - Citing the disputed vote in a Florida congressional district, a Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday urged Congress to approve his measure requiring a paper trail for electronic voting.

Rep. Rush Holt (news, bio, voting record), sponsor of the bill, said the inaccuracy of electronic touch-screen voting machines "poses a direct threat to the integrity of our electoral system." The New Jersey congressman argued the Florida district, in which more than 18,000 votes have gone uncounted, has exposed the system's flaws.

Florida law requires a recount in all five southwest Florida counties in the 13th Congressional District. But scrutiny is focused on Sarasota County, where touch-screen voting machines recorded that 18,382 people — 13 percent of voters in the Nov. 7 election — did not vote for either Republican Vern Buchanan or Democrat Christine Jennings, despite casting ballots in other races on the ballot. That rate was much higher than other counties in the district.

Rep. Robert Wexler (news, bio, voting record), D-Fla., said he found it "unfathomable" that more than 18,000 people would cast votes in other races but not in the congressional race. He added there's a host of theories that could explain what happened to those votes, but without a paper trail no one knows the truth.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061115/ap_on_go_co/electronic_voting

[Fridays Child]

1. Republican lawmakers will agree but only in districts where they lost.

I can easily imagine this scenario.

[texpatriot2004]

2. It is not a partisan issue. We need hand counted paper ballots

now!

[seafan]

3. We need hand-counted paper ballots, not a *paper trail*.

Kucinich's HR 6200 looks to be what the Doctor ordered.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.6200:

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Paper Ballot Act of 2006'.

SEC. 2. REQUIRING USE OF HAND-COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS.

Section 301(a) of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (42 U.S.C. 15481(a)) is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

`(7) SPECIAL RULES FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS- Notwithstanding any other provision of this subsection, in the case of a regularly scheduled general election for the electors of President and Vice President (beginning with the election in November 2008), the following rules shall apply:

`(A) The State shall conduct the election using only paper ballots.

`(B) The State shall ensure that the number of ballots cast at a precinct or equivalent location which are placed inside a single box or similar container does not exceed 500.

`(C) The ballots cast at a precinct or equivalent location shall be counted by hand by election officials at the precinct, and a representative of each political party with a candidate on the ballot, as well as any interested member of the public, may observe the officials as they count the ballots. The previous sentence shall not apply with respect to provisional ballots cast under section 302(a).'.

snip

[Copperred]

4. OPEN SOURCE VOTING IS THE ANSWER

www.openvoting.org

www.openvoting.org

www.openvoting.org


EVERYONE PLEASE JOIN THEIR MAILING LIST


THEY LITERALLY HAVE THE SOLUTION.....

OPEN SOURCE

[unc70]

7. Open Source voting is not the answer.

Check out some of the recent threads here from those of us with lots of experience building and securing mission critical systems. Paper ballots, hand counted is the only robust and reliable method.

Just consider one attack vector for this wonderful open sorce system: Just hide a latent piece of software in the hardware being assembled for this purpose -- how secure can you make the manufacturing lines for every component that contains any type of microcode -- graphics, disk, scanner, whatever. Now keep anyone with access to the machines from allowing any corruption to this system-wide integrity.

I am a strong advocate for Open Source Software, but not for counting votes.

I am just very paranoid and have over 40 years of experience with all types of COTS, OSS, embedded, and hardened systems.

(So paranoid I usually use a version of w3m to browse the web. -- Open Source )

[stillcool]

5. we need to get rid of the "Hack America's Vote Act"

..and replace it with a one size fits all solution with standard requirements nation-wide for every working part on an election, from registration to accurate results, with serious consequences for any tampering.

[Jack Rabbit]

6. I'll go a step further

I want the paper to be a ballot that cast and counted. There is no need to keep vote tallies in the machine.

[w4rma]

8. I agree. Holt should update that bill to paper *ballots*. (nt)