Statewide, federal....?? Have you physically lobbied in Washington or in your state legislature? Have you helped to write legislation, find sponsors and get it introduced? Have you worked with legislators personally to get them to sign on to what you're asking for? If not, you've missed out on some revelations about how things actually get done in the US, and the news isn't all good. It's like trying to walk through a brick wall most of the time. I'll admit it can be fun too, so if you haven't done these things to get what you and so many of us want, then join in, roll up your sleeves, and get to it. Sure, complaining has some value, but if that's all we did, nothing would happen.
Take a look at the quotes below and see if Georgia would have a hope in hell of getting any paper by 08 without HR811. Handel is not alone. SOS's/election officials across the country have the same mindset. They will do anything to keep their DRES and without federal legislation another election will pass us by. Do I want all the paper to be the ballot of record period, not just for audits and recounts. I sure as hell do. But how exactly is the government to enact laws that tell citizens (which surprisingly election officials are) what they can or can not buy without using the kind of law that that HR811 does?
GT: Would you talk about electronic voting – what’s working and what needs to be changed?
KH: Citizens seem to very much like the current machines from a user-friendly standpoint. Do we need to move to the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail or VVPAT – that’s a question of when, not if, in my mind. But it needs to be a practical transition. Currently, there’s just simply not a good machine on the market that does the things that we would need it to do from a VVPAT standpoint – as well as the audit and recount standpoint. I do think that we will move in that direction.
GT: When?
KH: The timeline for that I’m not so sure about, because it’s an expensive proposition. It’s an $80- to $100-million initiative, if we were to completely move from the current machines to some new type of machine, because our machines cannot be easily retrofitted with a printer unit. We would need to get the manufacturer to do an R&D initiative to develop something unique for us. That’s not the best way to go, generally. With that said, in the interim what I’ve asked in the budget – and I feel reasonably confident that the legislature will sign off on it – is money so we can have an independent audit of our machines. This audit would look at the hardware, software and all of our security, audit and recount procedures so we can have a gap plan, if you will, or a transition plan while we determine frankly, as a nation, what is going to be the next iteration of voting equipment.
GT: How do you feel about the machines?
KH: I remain open-minded around whether or not there’s anything inherently wrong with the machines. In Georgia we have simply not had any problem with the machines. The issues that have occurred have been human error type issues – things like a poll worker tripping over the cord – all people issues. That brings me to what I think is the far more serious issue within our election process – and that is poll workers. The average age of a poll worker in the United States is 72. We need to really revamp how we are recruiting and training our poll workers. We need to look at partnerships with colleges, partnerships with the business community. A couple of states have put in a process similar to jury duty for poll workers. This is not such an issue this year, as an off year. Next year for the presidential cycle we are going to need tens of thousands of good poll workers. Even if we could have a really technologically savvy individual – one – in each precinct, that would help a great deal. That’s very heavy on my mind.
GT: Any other voting machine concerns?
KH: The other thing that we need is to understand where our citizens truly are about these machines. We did a pilot project of VVPAT machines in three precincts last November. There was exit polling done, if you will, about voter confidence. The number was 84 or 86 percent that said they were confident that their vote had been counted on the electronic machine without VVPAT. That number went to 89 percent with VVPAT. Again, this is anecdotal – but that’s not a huge jump for a price tag of $80- to $100-million. So we really need to drill down with our citizens. We need to broadly – from a nationwide standpoint – have a better understanding of where the citizens are on this issue because confidence in an election is twofold. It is how citizens perceive it and the raw facts of how it was conducted.
http://www.georgiatrend.com/features-people/05_07_handel.shtml
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