NOTE: The following comment is by computer security expert Rebecca Mercuri who has been in the forefront of the voting integrity movement since 1989. Of all of the computer experts she is the one who gets to the meat of the problem fastest. IMO she has by far the most integrity and common sense compared to all the other computer experts who have been working on this issue. Mercuri provides expert witness services for elections and other forensic computing matters.
http://www.notablesoftware.comMercuri comment:
The 2007 Holt bill and its revised version is NOT a compromise bill,
although it HAS been COMPROMISED in various regards. Specifically it
refunds the Election Assistance Commission (the earlier version actually
extended the EAC as an institution, indefinitely, the later version provides
a $1B handout to the vendors, to be doled out by the EAC since they are
out of HAVA money to give away) with funds that will CERTAINLY be used by
states, such Holt's home base of New Jersey, to purchase VVPAT add-ons to
DREs, hence perpetuating the use of this unreliable and expensive equipment.
The bill does NOT ban DREs, as some HR811 advocates have been misinformed to
believe and expound. In the case of New Jersey, purchasing
precinct-based opscan equipment is NOT an option, since the state has
continued (to this date) to refuse to certify any such equipment.
The Holt bill also will be the FIRST to FEDERALLY legislate and thus
legitimize the restrictive use of non-disclosure agreements in the
examination of election systems. Certainly Holt could have disallowed
trade secrecy for voting systems and the vendors could continue to
protect their intellectual property with copyrights and patents.
Instead, this is a very bad aspect of the bill, because it introduces
this sanction of secrecy in such fashion that election advocates run the
risk of being silenced or threatened with lawsuits if they reveal
information about the equipment. The NDA section of the Holt bill has
been weasel-worded such that advocates will be required to foot hefty
attorney fees in order to ensure that the NDAs that they sign do not
contain implicit risks such as compensation for vendor loss of income,
criminal charges if false claims are made, and so on.
There are many other severely bad aspects of this bill, such that it
does NOT pose an improvement for 2008 or 2001, but rather provides a
further legacy of bad voting equipment and election-related policies,
that will be exploited by the vendors into a 180 degree turn-around from
the bill's (presumed and touted) intentions. We will be dealing with
this additional resulting mess for another half-decade, much as we found
ourselves dealing with the mess that HAVA created for the last half-decade.
I am of the strong opinion that a bad federal bill is WORSE than no bill
at all. At least with no federal bill, the states can continue to enact
GOOD legislation (with the assistance of input from concerned citizens
and election advocates). With a bad bill, threats (such as we saw with
HAVA) and intimidation (such as from the DoJ) can be used to force
unwanted election equipment down on the municipalities. HR811 is a bad
bill and should not be supported AT ALL BY ANYONE, least of all,
election integrity advocates.
Actually, it is wrong to blame Bev if the bill fails -- she is only one
of many vocal opponents to the bill -- and further, the companion bill
is unlikely not to have sufficient bipartisan support to pass muster in
the Senate, and certainly both the House and Senate do not have
sufficient votes to override a Bush veto. So the attack on Bev (and I've
heard similar ones quite a bit from HR811 advocates, who all seem to be
reciting mantras from the same prayerbook these days) is just an
irrelevant and irreverent way of making it seem that she is disloyal for
speaking her mind. Barbara's other comment about Bev being the "all
powerful leader" is just simply rude. Quite frankly, Bev is correct in
that HR811 is a bait and switch in many regards, and the "shushing"
tactics used by so-called election integrity advocates to quelch debate
and discussion on Holt's bill this round have been rather appalling. It
seems apparent (at least to me) that supporting (or remaining quiet
about) HR811 is actually a "litmus test" to see who will continue to get
a seat at the table at hearings, and who will benefit from the grant
money being doled out by the feds.
So far, we can see that the legacy of this crop of House Dems will
include hundreds of billions of war debt, plus the death of tens of
thousands (including many of our own service people) in the Iraqi civil
war, all in the spirit of "compromise." Let us not be fooled by the
gutless Dems that Holt's voting bill will not be similarly "compromised"
to promote the vendors' agendas.
Rebecca Mercuri.
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