Rep. Rush Holt Urges Congress To Approve Measure Requring E-Voting Paper Trail

[kpete]

House member wants e-voting paper trail
By DONNA DE LA CRUZ, Associated Press Writer

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.

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

[tblue]

1. What could possibly be the argument against it?

[John Q. Citizen]

2. The early touch votes had about 2% under vote. if you take those out of

the totals, the under vote was over 16% for the congressional race on election day.

[Parche]

3. electronic machines

I dont want them at all.......they can be hacked into even with a reciept given.
We need to get back to the voting we had before electronic machines came about.

[RC]

4. Nothing less than a human readable paper ballot will do.

Anything getting in the way of a human marked paper ballot is subject to electron fraud.

[Wilms]

5. 550 needs a meaningful audit.

2% won't cut it much of the time.

New Election Auditing Protocol Proposed

By Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA

August 12, 2006

In a newly released paper, “Random Auditing of E-Voting Systems: How Much is Enough?”, Howard Stanislevic argues that “Auditing protocols proposed and implemented at the federal and state levels that rely on small-percentage random sampling without replacement are unlikely to detect miscounts sufficient to change the outcome of Congressional or smaller local races, even if such races initially appear to be decided by relatively wide margins.”

While accepting that a random sample comprising a small percentage of thousands of voting systems may be adequate to confirm the outcome of all but the closest statewide races, Stansislevic recommends that a much larger percentage of systems must be audited than commonly suggested for Congressional elections. "Each race must be considered a separate auditing process taking into account the vote margin, the number of precincts in which the race appeared on the ballot and the possibility of miscounts concentrated in a relatively small number of large precincts."

Stanislevic is quick to add that he does not discourage legislation requiring routine election audits, but rather, that the limitations of such audits must be acknowledged by those who promote them so as not to engender a false sense of security. “Routine methods of error and fraud detection must be developed and employed to supplement small-percentage audits, particularly when there is no obvious trigger for additional auditing or full recounts.”

snip/link to the paper

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1664&Itemid=26