More HAVA law to be used against DREs [View All]

[Bill Bored]

HAVA section 301 requires that each state shall adopt uniform and nondiscriminatory standards that define what constitutes a vote and what will be counted as a vote for each category of voting system used in the State.

Why is this so important?

In some states there are laws or regulations about testing of DREs that say how many "votes" should be cast on the machines to test them. Vendors and lazy BoEs don't want to test the machines by casting actual votes because with DREs, this is HARD WORK! But any legal language that says "votes" must be used to test the machines, as well they should be, must NOT be interpreted to allow self-diagnostic programs. If it were, this is tantamount to saying that under HAVA, a vote on Election Day can be generated by a machine instead of voter!

The point is that it's much easier to test Optical Scanners with real paper ballots than to test DREs by punching in votes on the screen. Since HAVA requires the term "vote" to be well defined, we can use this to address the testing deficiencies inherent in DREs and push for other systems that are easier to test with real votes and not just self-diagnostic programs. The HAVA deadline for establishing the definition of "vote" in each state is Jan 1, 2006.

We should continue to trash aspects of HAVA that do not protect our franchise, such as allowing DREs without voter-verified paper audit records, but we should also use HAVA to get what we want: free, fair and verifiable elections.

Please spread this around!