Stopping H.R. 550 Because We Can't Compromise on Democracy (X)

[kster]

Posted by: angry_chuck
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2761453

This article co-authored by Nancy Tobi and Paul Lehto

Following the General Election of 2006, which returned control of the U.S. House and Senate to the Democrats, Common Cause sent a mass email to its members exhorting them to support House Resolution 550, also known as the Holt Bill. H.R. 550 provides for the addition of "paper trails" to electronic voting, provides for audits of 2% or more of the paper trails with discrepancies to be resolved in favor of the paper trail, makes permanent and further strengthens the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), and requires that source code for e-voting machines be disclosed and placed in escrow.
Yet Common Cause is DEEPLY wrong about H.R. 550 as a solution to the problems in America's election systems...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_061118_stopping_h_r__550_be.htm

[Kelvin Mace]

1. If you want to throw away the only decent chance we

have, then by all means follow Bev and her gang and oppose 550.

[HomerRamone]

2. Read the article.

Really, it makes sense. This bill is a big risk.

[Kelvin Mace]

3. I have

We have had this argument many times in this forum. Mr. Lehto posts here.

We have also discussed why their insistence that we can move to a system of paper ballots counted by hand will NOT work.

[kster]

4. You think PBHC can not be done, but you also

think that having lawmakers who benefit from keeping the vote counting in secret, away from the eyes of the American people, can also be trusted to make the rules that will fix the problems with the secret vote counting machines.

[Kelvin Mace]

10. I said no such thing

I fought for a law in my state which requires VVPB in TS systems (I would have gladly seen them oulawed, but you can't win every battle.

We have oversight. We have post election audits. We have paper ballots in 70% of our counties. We have criminal penalties in place to punish cheating, dishonesty, and vendor misconduct.

If all the voting machines were rigged, why do we control the House and Senate? Wait, let me guess, they decided to let us win to throw Bev off the trail.

Right.

[kster]

13. We don't control the House and Senate

The Politicians control the House and Senate. Oh wait, the Politicians are letting us count 1% of OUR ballots,

WE'RE NOT WORTHY!!

[Kelvin Mace]

14. Oh right,

every single politican is a crook.

Jeebus, get a grip.

[kster]

20. Every single one of them,

why, because they REMAIN SILENT on the secret vote counting machines, and then try and pass sneaky little laws, that won't do shit, to prevent secret vote counting, they know it, and a hell of allot of us know it.

Someone needs to tell them that secret vote counting is over, they need to start planning on how to win elections fair and square and without manipulating the will of the people.

THEIR VOTE SCAM IS OVER!!

[Wilms]

5. HCPB not working is YOUR opinion, Kelvin.

Let's get that straight. That opinion is at your "insistence", not necessarily others, though I think you make a valid argument.

Also, if it turns out that Bev likes canoes, try not to hate me. I love canoes. If Bev and her league like tacos, try not to look down on others that do.

The HR550 audit is extremely troublesome. Both in terms of percentage, and who would conduct it. Do you not agree?

As for the article, I'm puzzled by the authors' statement:

The election integrity movement has shown that the technology solutions HAVA foisted on the American public--with the full support of the federal government to the tune of an appropriated $4 billion-- were based on a singularly faulty premise that was not fully disclosed to the American public: the idea that private ownership of elections through proprietary technology and trade secret software has a legitimate place in a truly democratic election system, and that the safekeeping of our ballots and the counting of our votes should be outsourced to private corporate interests who claim the Constitution is inapplicable to them as private actors, rather than held in the hands of our American communities and overseen by local citizens.

How dramatic. And not probably the case. For one, election officials foisted technology solutions on the American public, not HAVA. Ask some New Yorkers.

HAVA and e-voting is based, at least in part, on some or all of the following notions (depending on who you ask):

1. Make voting accessible

2. Make voting and tallying accurate

3. Make tallying fast

4. Make elections more hackable

5. Fleece the American people of billions of dollars with piles of costs associated with e-voting

6. Mosts states (and activists) won't figure out that HAVA DOES NOT REQUIRE COMPUTERIZATION


Take your pick. I have my favorites.

Better that all involved cut the hyperbole and start looking at repairing this legislation.

[Kelvin Mace]

9. I have outlined, as have others with good credentials

on the issue why HCPB won't work.

Personally, I am tired of the debate with folks who refuse to be swayed by facts. I have enough of hat dealing with election officials.

[Wilms]

24. You're "tired of the debate" ?

To me you seem comfortable as an anti-HCPB evangelist.

Snap out of it, Kelvin. You're on auto-pilot.

Perhaps you'd be kind enough to acknowledge the question I asked, and the fact that we DO HCPB "in this country" and that there are more places that could do so just as easily.

[OnTheOtherHand]

26. part of the problem may be

-- you asked Kelvin about problems with the HR 550 audit, and you advocate "repairing" the legislation.

That's great (really, I'm not being flip), but it isn't the premise of this thread. If we can hijack the thread for that purpose, cool. But the OP does not envisage "repairing" HR 550. It's a declaration of absolutes. Either we accept the absolutes, or we don't. It's not as if the OP is an invitation to dialogue.

Under the circumstances, auto-pilot may be appropriate.

[OnTheOtherHand]

11. tacos? you ask a lot ;)

Yeah, me personally, I would just as soon leave That Woman out of the audit debate. And it's too bad, from my perspective, that the audit debate and the hand-count debate are intermingled. If I were from New Hampshire, maybe I would love 100% hand counts myself. I just don't see them happening, nor do I consider them essential to democracy.

And I agree that 2% is weak, at least for competitive races at less than a state level (and in some smaller states).

As for the statement you quoted, I'm not sure you are interpreting it quite correctly. After the first hundred words of the sentence, it's sort of hard to know.

[FogerRox]

12. I like canoes, but I raced a kayak. Slalom.

Wilms, so often the voice of reason. >sigh< a pleasure sir, to be back in the ER Forum again.

[kster]

23. Well, you are paying attention

HERES A late, Welcome to the DU........

[philb]

6. Kathy Drpp ways HR550 has problems that need to be fixed

Now that the November, 2006 election is over, we have a very short time period to ensure that future U.S. election outcomes are accurate and honest.

Despite some mainstream media reports, there were significant serious problems with electronic voter registration records, with electronic voting machine malfunctions, ballot definition programming errors, memory card failures, with missing electronic votes; with triple-counted electronic votes, or with wrong electronic vote counts (in the tens of thousands) in almost every state; and the exit poll evidence once again shows likely evidence of significant vote miscount.

Experts agree that our voting system is vulnerable to fraud and error in the United States today:

http://utahcountvotes.org/docs/WhatdotheExpertsSay.pdf

U.S. election systems are vulnerable to innocent miscount, electronic error, and fraud because almost 100% of ballots, even paper ballots, are counted electronically, without sufficient manual counts to detect or correct outcome-altering vote miscount. Unless we take action within the next year to pass legislation requiring sufficient, routine, transparent, verifiable, independent manual audits of voter verifiable paper records, we may irrevocably lose our democracy!

Unfortunately some groups, like Common Cause are pushing for fast passage of the ill-advised Holt HR550 bill as it was written in the prior Congress. The Holt HR550 audit provisions, while having admirable intent, as now written are:

1. insufficient to detect outcome-altering vote miscount,
2. are not transparent,
3. are not verifiable, and
4. have many other significant flaws.

Using voter verfiable paper ballots is only false assurance if the electronic counts are not manually independently checked. In Florida 2000 the optical scan paper ballot electronic counts wrongly gave Florida to Bush rather than Gore, as the Miami Herald recount afterwards showed, and there is much evidence of wrongly counted optical scan paper ballots since then.

Here is a recently revised proposal for independent manual vote count audits for Utah based on NEDA's recent 'Election Integrity Audit' paper that still needs revisions. Although not perfect yet, it is important for us to begin to work immediately to promote similar legislation at state and federal levels. Please read it. Thank you.

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/VoteCountAudit-UT.pdf

There is a short reference list at the end of our Utah legislative proposal that you can use for further research. You can see that it also pulls some ideas from the Utah Lt. Governor's vote count audit policies, so it should work for election officials.

Please urge your U.S. and state congressional representatives and senators to pass legislation requiring sufficient, routine, manual, independent, transparent, verifiable audits of electronic vote counts based on our work, which is agreed upon by the scientific community as being the correct way to calculate the minimum amount of vote counts that must be manual audited to detect any outcome-altering electronic miscount. No state in America today does sufficient, manual, independent, transparent, verifiable, scientific vote count audits.

For anyone who is working on election integrity, our "election integrity audit" paper, while long, is a "must-read". Skip the math sections if you want to because most of it is common sense and the charts and tables are informative.

http://vote.nist.gov/ElectionIntegrityAudit.pdf

We must insist now on verifiably accurate election outcomes in the United States!

If any of you rewrite and improve our Utah proposal for your state, or for a proposal for federal legislation, please let us know, so we can all benefit from it. We could someone's use help writing a more concise version.

This is no time to relax or give up!

We are have a critically short time now to ensure that we have honest, accurate election outcomes in the United States.

If you can help put the brakes on Common Cause and others who are unwisely pushing through the Holt HR550 amendment as written (just as Common Cause unwisely pushed through the Help America Vote Act that exacerbated US election problems tenfold in 2002), please urge Common Cause to slow down and first consult with experts to rewrite the Holt audit provision ensure that required election audits are sufficient, verifiable, transparent, scientific, independent, and constitutional. Plus there are many other good ideas that need to be incorporated into new Holt election legislation before it is put out on the floor.

Thank you for your help and support. I hope that our rewrite of the Utah vote count audit proposal will be helpful to your efforts to ensure that we can fix U.S. voting systems by 2008.

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/VoteCountAudit-UT.pdf


Best Regards,
--
----
Kathy Dopp
http://electionarchive.org

[kster]

7. HR 550, as written or rewritten, can work, if they

take the paper its written or rewritten on, and recycle it into Paper ballots, so that "We the People" can hand count them paper ballots by hand in ALL future elections.

[Kelvin Mace]

15. Hand-counted paper ballots are just NOT GOING to happen in this country

UNLESS:

You change the entire structure of the political system in ALL fifty states to create fewer items on the ballot and more frequent elections.

This will happen about five minutes before our sun goes nova.

I swear it is like arguing with people about perpetual motion machines. Sure they can exist on paper where you are allowed to suspend all the laws of reality, but they can never exist anywhere in reality.

[OnTheOtherHand]

17. but, Kelvin, We Can't Compromise on Physics!

I'm somewhat more willing to entertain hand counts as a hypothetical than you are. But I at least want to see a Plan B: Before The Revolution. 'Hand counts or bust' may sound grand, until the bust.

[Kelvin Mace]

18. Theoretically

it may be possible to violate the laws of physics and travel at supraluminal velocities. Someone may just invent a real "warp drive" that can pull it off.

To me, the chance someone will come up with a way of hand-counting paper ballots that will be fair, quick, accurate and cost-effective, is the same that someone will be tooling around in a starship this century.

[Bill Bored]

8. House Resolution 550?

Gee, you'd think they'd know the difference between a House Resolution
and a House of Representatives BILL, wouldn't ya?

Here's House Resolution 550 if anyone's interested:

109th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. RES. 550

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the importance of maintaining the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum as the preeminent multilateral institution in the Asia-Pacific region.

Whereas the Asia-Pacific region accounts for 40 percent of the world's population, more than half of world trade, and 60 percent of global gross domestic product;

Whereas the growth of the Asia-Pacific region has created millions of new jobs in the United States;

Whereas United States businesses in the Asia-Pacifc region face obstacles to doing business in the region, in part due to a rise in discriminatory regulations and standards;

Whereas the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) was established as a forum for the United States to address business concerns in the region;

Whereas success in APEC contributes directly to keeping the United States at the forefront of the global marketplace by strongly supporting current World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, developing model measures for high quality free trade agreements, sensible regulations and standards, and streamlining the movement of goods across borders by its members; and

Whereas the upcoming APEC Leaders' Meeting in Busan, Korea is an important opportunity to demonstrate to the world the commitment of the United States to improving prosperity and security in the Asia-Pacific region: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that--

(1) the continuing success of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is in the national interest of the United States because APEC is the only multilateral institution in the Asia-Pacific region that includes the United States; and

(2) APEC should remain at the center of United States diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region.

[IndyOp]

16. Independent of criticism of anyone else's plan - what exactly is YOUR plan?

You believe a national bill for 100% hand-counted paper ballots will pass.

I believe you are wrong.

IF the national bill for hand-counted paper ballots will NOT pass -- What is YOUR plan?

:shrug: :grr:

[Kelvin Mace]

19. I would guess something involving

elves.

[kster]

22. OK, now you have a problem with elves

[kster]

21. Keep pushing for HCPB, Its easy my family freinds and neighbors

understand counting ballots out in the open for all to see, to push HR 550 I would have to tell my family freinds and neighbors, I know its wrong to count votes in secret, but with HR550 we can atleast try and make sure that the machines, counting the ballots, counted correctly, and if we find a problem, we can then hand count 100% of the ballots, its just to complicated to explain.

My family freinds and neighbors fully understand that counting ballots out in the open for all to see from the get go , makes a helluvalot more sense.

Who can disagree with the HCPB way, that tells everyone who wants to witness the votes being counted, come down and observe the vote counting, bring cameras, video, bring you family freinds and neighbors Dem, Repub, Ind, and and who ever the hell eLse you want to bring TO WITNESS THE VOTES BEING COUNTED, WHO CAN ARGUE WITH THAT POSITION?

[IndyOp]

25. Who can argue with HCPB? Boards of Election, Congressmembers who

have to pass the laws.

Kster - I respect that you have talked with your family, friends, and neighbors about election reform - that is very important work.

Now - for the next step - you have to go talk to members of the Boards of Election and the members of your County Council, Board of Election, State Legislators, and National Legislators who are the ones who will have to be motivated to take action.

Right now -- HCPB is an idealist solution -- and lots of folks are talking about it to the people who aren't the ones who have to be made to take action to get real change.

Where we are now: "Have idealist conversations about HCPB online and with friends" -OR- "Get legislators and Boards to go along with a plan that will secure elections."

HR550 needs significant amendment, IMO, but HCPB is a turkey -- it isn't going to fly.

What SHORT OF HCPB will secure our elections to your satisfaction?

If the options are "Do nothing" vs. "Pass national legislation requiring optical scan ballots, precinct-counted and automatic, random audits with specific requirements for when 100% hand counts will be required" -- which do you want?

We do NOT have months to push for HCPB - the law has to be passed now, now, now to have an effect for 2008.

Again - if HR550 require optical scan paper ballots then the OPTION of 100% hand counts for some or all races is left open to each jurisdiction -- so you can go talk your local BOE into it and I wish you luck - sincerely. Mine isn't budging. Neither are the other 2 BOE's I've railed at and pleaded with and...