A simple federal law: "All elections are required to use voter readable paper ballots"

[w4rma]

"A statistically significant (I'm not a statistician: 2%? 5%? 10%?) number of sorted ballots in every single election must be manually audited."


Democrats seem to have election reform as a priority for the next Congress:
Dean calls for election changes, reform
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2604201&mesg_id=2604201

I think we need to pass a simple federal law such as this, as soon as possible and WELL BEFORE THE NEXT ELECTION IN NOVEMBER 2007.

I think the law should be kept simple, easy to understand, and should give local election officials as much freedom as possible to choose (and/or keep) honest voting methods. A law that gives all districts the option of hand counting their ballots if thieir constituents want to and it isn't a drastic change from our current system so it won't scare up as much opposition as a drastic all-encompasing/micromanaging bill would.

[Cobalt-60]

1. A Demonstration is in order

A district should be picked and and run through a paper ballot drill well ahead of the election.
I doubt the repubs would participate, but the drill would materially simulate an election with hand counted paper ballots from 6AM poll opening to the final hand count.
Perhaps the issue could be :Does Hanity suck, blow, or both?

[w4rma]

6. Practice runs are good, but America has done fine up until 2000 without

them. It's these electronic black boxes that threw a monkey wrench into things. And I think we can do alot through the law to minimize different types of election fraud such as intimidation and trickery.

[RC]

2. I'll vote for that.

There must be a verifiable paper trail. Paper ballots that are counted each and every election. Then stored for X number of years. Remember Florida?

[w4rma]

5. I am posting on DU because of Florida. Of course I remember Florida.

:hi:

[Kip Humphrey]

3. Start by supportig H.R.6200: Hand=Counted Paper Ballots required for presidential elections

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.06200:

Call, write, email your congressional representative demanding HR 6200 be passed immeiately.

Thank you, Dennis Kucinich

[w4rma]

4. That doesn't sound like a very simple bill.

Only hand counts? no scanners? no sorters? (even if they are audited?) No, I think that is too much for most districts. I think they'll complain and then later on another bill might get passed, on the pretext of "rectifying" their complaints, that would bring in fraud.

And only in presidential elections? What's up with that? We'll have electronic stealing machines for Congress and then another corner for the paper ballots for president every four years? That just makes things more complected and easier for pro-black box supporters to demonize.

Sometimes I don't think that Kucinich thinks through all the potential problems of some of the things he supports. In general he's top notch, tho.

[onthebench]

7. The Vote-Trakker already does this

Also, a federal law will only affect the congressional races. All other elections are governed by state laws except New York City which can certify its own elections outside of NY state authority. HAVA only mandates states that take the federal money. If a state refuses to take the money, they do not have to follow HAVA other than for congressional races. Note the presidential race is not a federal election. It is a state election for state electors.

The Vote-trakker uses all of the electonic advantages but can print a paper record that a voter can see behind glass just before it goes into a box.

[w4rma]

8. Paper *ballots*, not a paper "record" or "receipt". The Vote-Trakker does *not* do this.

Ballots have centuries of law behind them. "Vote receipts" and "vote records" have zero law behind them.

Nor is this Vote-Trakker a law enforcing, nationwide, the use of paper ballots and mandantory manual audits.

[onthebench]

9. Actually it is...

The paper record is what the jurisdiction uses for a recount. It is the paper ballot. It is in fact more secure than a traditional paper ballot. It does not have stray marks, incomplete fill ins, rips, holes, or other problems that a traditional paper ballot would have. In fact it would be orders of magnitude harder to stuff this ballot as opposed to the traditional paper ballot. The problem that a voting reform advocate will not overcome with paper is the blind and other disabled voter. Their voices are very loud and heard very well by lawmakers. I have thought about this problem for six years and I still have not seen an overall better solution.

The problem with the laws are that there is no way to make a federal law about voting other than for congressional races. The states control the voting.

"Nor is this Vote-Trakker a law enforcing, nationwide" what exactly did you mean by that?

Peace

[w4rma]

10. It doesn't have centuries of law behind it. And it makes the process more confusing. (nt)

[w4rma]

11. I thought some more about what you are saying and reread your post. If the law is written well

and that machine is basically a printer and counter of ballots, what you are saying could meet the requirements of the type of law, I have said in the OP, that I support.

I now think that the law should also force any method used to count ballots to be physically separate from any method used to print them.

That would make things simpler, all around, I think for everyone. It would be much harder to create fraud since the elections personel could then *watch* as each ballot was counted through the counting machine(s), rather than our current system which tries to combine printer and sorter and therefore gives hackers more and easier targets.