Looks like E-Voting reform is being put on hold. :(

[garybeck]

This is not good. Looks like paperless DREs will be deciding who our next President is.

http://news.com.com:80/Senators+to+abandon+08+e-voting+paper+trail+mandate/2100-1014_3-6198789.html

Senators to abandon '08 e-voting paper trail mandate
Democrat behind a bill to ban paperless touch-screen machines says she doesn't expect new rules to take effect until at least 2010.
By Anne Broache
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: July 25, 2007, 11:36 AM PDT
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WASHINGTON--Democratic senators on Wednesday made another push for banning electronic voting machines that lack paper trails, but they've backed away from doing so in time for next year's presidential election.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chief sponsor of a contentious bill called the Ballot Integrity Act that proposes such changes, said she fears requiring all states to employ so-called voter-verified paper records in their systems, with some primaries only six months away, "could be an invitation to chaos." Earlier this year, she called for enacting such changes by 2008.

"Pushing the date back to the 2010 elections will give us more time to reach a bipartisan consensus with voting reform advocates and local and state officials to enact a new law that provides for increased accuracy and accountability at the polls without raising the specter of creating major new errors," she said at the start of a hearing here in the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which she leads.

more

http://news.com.com:80/Senators+to+abandon+08+e-voting+paper+trail+mandate/2100-1014_3-6198789.html

[AndyA]

1. OK, so what does this mean for the 2008 elections?

Have enough states that used electronic/paperless voting and had trouble with those systems abandoned them so that the GOP can't steal 2008?

We are aware of widespread problems with accuracy and vote tampering in Florida, Ohio, and California, so it should be more difficult for KKKarl to do his thing again. But are we still at high risk?

[Freddie Stubbs]

2. It means they will steal the 2008 elections just like they did in 2006?

:shrug:

[garybeck]

4. Actually there is very clear evidence that

the Dems would have gained MORE seats than they did if the votes were counted properly.

[Wilms]

11. Nothing wrong with providing a link for that. n/t

[garybeck]

3. 40% of votes on paperless ...

My understanding is that approximately 40% of votes will be counted on paperless DRE machines. Doesn't take a genius to see that if you had control of those votes you could decide the winner.

But the real issue is not just the DRE paperless machines. The pending legislation would have addressed other issues as well. For example the optical scan machines are also vulnerable to rigging and fraud and the legislation called for random audits on these machines. Without the random audits, even the optical scans can't be trusted. It's not clear which parts are being put on hold so I don't want to speculate. But denying any part of reform before the 08 election is bad news for anyone who wants to have confidence in the election results.

[Wilms]

10. I'd check those numbers.

According to this pdf...

http://www.electiondataservices.com/VE%20Summary%20by%20Type%2020061107_counties.pdf

... <40% of registered voters would have confronted a DRE if they all voted in 2006. So your statement assumes there are no DRE with printers.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. It means we are screwn

[EFerrari]

5. Thanks, Dianne! Let's have an orderly fake election again!

:nuke:

[marions ghost]

6. Well but....the bill may still be unsupportable--

It doesn't address the recount procedures...

From the article you posted:

'At Wednesday's hearing, a panel of state and local officials and a computer scientist with decades of experience evaluating voting machines told the committee that the Senate bill is slightly preferable to the House version but is still unsupportable for a number of reasons.

The bill "is aimed at the right target, but it needs to be loaded with the right ammunition," said George Gilbert, director of the Guilford County Board of Elections in North Carolina. Right now, the "ammunition" is a paper voting record and manual tabulation, but "the fact that the two most celebrated recent attempts to manually count ballots have dealt severe blows to public confidence should raise red flags for this committee," he argued, referring to the infamous Florida presidential recount in 2000 and a close governor's race in Washington state in 2004. ' /snip/

http://news.com.com/Senators+to+abandon+08+e-voting+paper+trail+mandate/2100-1014_3-6198789.html

-------------------

I understand that SOME form of paper "trail" is perhaps marginally better than paperless voting, but I'm not sure that this compromise (ie. adding printers to DREs) is the way to go.

Just print paper ballots, use electronic counters and hand-counting to count them...and throw the DREs into the nearest landfill. THE STATES HAVE TIME TO DO THAT BEFORE NOV 2008.

JUST RETIRE THE DREs ALTOGETHER. That's the solution.

[garybeck]

8. the solution I see for DREs

is to convert them to ballot marking devices.

you can still use the touchscreen for input. Connect it to a cheap inkjet printer and have it print a regular 8x11 page that can be scanned for counting. You still need to do audits on the scanner/counters of course.

[marions ghost]

13. Why bother with that?

This would be an OK solution for disabled voters, but a nightmare for the rest. Cheap printers that screw up...WHY? And you still have to feed it into a scanner. WHY have more equipment to malfunction? The ability of local elections personnel to deal with electronic equipment is not impressive.

It's so easy to mark a piece of card stock and feed it into a counter. With open access code and a strict schedule for random (hand count) audits, there is little to fear. It's MUCH easier to administer and easier to ensure that a large number of voters can use the polling place at one time. The cost is about half what keeping the loser DREs going would be.

There is just no DRE that is worth messing with, paper trail or not--other than one good one at each precinct for disabled voters.

[partylessinOhio]

9. Feather-brain Feinstein does it again! This woman thinks, speaks and moves in

in slow motion.

Making sure our votes count is the second most important issue facing us, second behind impeachment. Both issues are being ignored by the Democratic majority put in office in November, 2006.

How is this happening? Why are they ignoring the voters' will? How the hell can we ever get these Democrats out of office if are ballots are not safe and secure and will not be counted? We need to clear out both parties and start fresh.

:thumbsdown:

[marions ghost]

14. Because

a large number of State Elections Boards invested in paperless DREs with money from HAVA (Help America Vote Act of 2002)--which was nothing more than a boondoggle to the Republican-owned evoting corporations.

SO the reason all this legislation designed to address the problems has stalled out or been delayed is because the industry does NOT want any changes, and the States that have invested everything in DRE evoting machines would suffer a lot of loss of face for being so trusting and stupid (or complicit in some cases). They got railroaded into a bad business deal and didn't ask the right questions. Basically everyone is protecting their turf, natch.

So the voters suffer once again. States could switch right now to paper ballots and (with audits and hand-counts) we could have a much safer election in 2008. It's entirely possible...but you'd have to sideline the DREs (or retrofit them all for disabled voter use), and just go back to what we should have done in the first place. There is no way to make evoting really safe for many years to come.

Ireland bit the bullet and threw their whole paperless evoting system out. We should do the same.

[Hubert Flottz]

12. Taxation without representation...

They can count every penny you make but they can't count your freakin' vote!

[marions ghost]

15. Check out what states have done independently of Feinstein bill

GO HERE FOR A STATE-BY-STATE RUNDOWN of verified voting legislation already enacted or pending...

http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?list=type&type=43

'To be sure, a number of states have already taken the sort of action that Feinstein, her allies and voter rights advocates support. Verified Voting notes that 30 states have already enacted legislation or regulations requiring paper ballots, although not all of those policies have taken effect yet.'

So there have been improvements...

[marions ghost]

17. Note re. the quote above which says

"30 states have enacted regulations requiring paper ballots" is a bit misleading....

If you go to the link you can see that this really means either paper ballots or VVPR (Voter verified Paper RECORD)....meaning the states can decide. So they COULD choose to add printers and whatnot rather than simply using paper ballots.

They do not legislate paper BALLOTS per se.

[helderheid]

16. DAMNIT WHEN WILL WE LEARN??!?!

[HCE SuiGeneris]

18. No... it certainly is NOT good.

Causes me to wonder :wtf: are they thinking.