The House Administration Committee Sends Voter Confidence Bill to House Floor
[My comments in brackets [ ]'s]. The new Holt bill with markup as of May 8 is posted on the National Association of Secretaries of State web site: http://www.nass.org/Hill%20Documents/HR%20811%20ZL%20Substitute%20as%20reported%205_8_07.pdf The House Admin Committee Announcement: http://cha.house.gov/ Truthout's Matt Renner wrote a critique of the new bill pointing out that, under the bill, states could choose to replace existing digital recording electronic DRE machines with newer DRE machines which do not fully solve the problems. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051007A.shtml [Hopefully states will responsibly replace existing DREs with economical, auditable voter-marked optical scan paper ballot systems - and ballot assist or ballot marking devices for voters with disabilities and voters with foreign language needs.] Here are the principal changes between the earlier introduced bill and what was reported out of committee [written by someone else & I have not checked every statement]: * Effective Date for New Requirements – January 2008 deadline has been replaced with bifurcated deadline: • All jurisdictions that used any paper-ballot-based voting system at all in 2006 (including thermal reel-to-reel systems and accessible systems that used a paper ballot in any manner) have until the first election in 2010 to meet new requirements; • All jurisdictions that had no voter verified paper ballots at all in 2006 have until November 2008 to meet all of the requirements (and they are not entitled to a waiver) * Funding for Voting System Requirements – has been increased from $300 million to $1 billion. * Ban on Internet connections – has been expanded to include, in addition to devices upon which votes are cast, devices upon which votes are tabulated and ballots are programmed. * Software disclosure – the requirement that software be disclosed to any person has been replaced by a requirement that election-dedicated software be released to qualified persons who sign non-disclosure agreements protecting intellectual property rights and trade secrets. * Extension of Authorization of EAC – has been removed * Military and overseas voting – overseas ballots are included in audits, but the requirement that the DOD and EAC develop protocols for treatment of paper ballots has been removed. * Vote of Record language – now provides that even if paper ballots have been demonstrated to have been compromised in numbers exceeding the margin of victory, "the electronic tally shall not be used as the exclusive basis for determining the official certified vote tally." * Audit Board -- The Audit Board has been removed, but it has been replaced with a requirement that the entity chosen by the State to conduct the audits satisfy the requirements of "independence" set forth in the GAO's "Government Accounting Standards." * How many Federal Elections will be audited – Unopposed elections and elections determined by more than an 80% margin of victory are not required to be audited. * Audit procedures and ballot custody – Audits must be conducted in the place where the ballots are stored and counted after the election, and in the presence of the ballot custodians. * Funding for audits – an explicit authorization of $100 million annually has been added. * Recounts that occur prior to certification (and might overlap with an audit) – Section 327 requires that any pre-certification recount done instead of an audit be done by hand count of the paper ballots, and it has been expanded to provide that if the recount is not a 100% count, that at least as many ballots be counted, the selection of those ballots be just as random, the recount be just as publicly observable, and the results be published, all as is required of audits. -------- [My comments and recommendations follow] In sum, compromises were made to the original HR811 to please voting vendors, election officials, and election activists - so this result might be the best bill that could possibly be implemented in time to achieve auditable voting systems and manual audits by the November 2008 election. I was very disappointed to notice that the bill still requires audit amounts of 10%, 5%, and 3% which will only detect one or more corrupt precincts whenever sufficient votes are miscounted to alter election outcomes with only a one in ten chance in some cases, and yet are more administratively burdensome than 99% success rate audits; but at least NIST is given the option of determining other permissable audit procedures. The major problems that are not addressed by HR811 and its companion Senate bill S559 are: 1. the need for timely public access to election records and data that is necessary for the public to be able to verify the integrity of the electoral process and the manual audits, and to be able to measure voter service and voter disenfranchisement levels; and 2. the need for public release, scrutiny, and improvement to voted ballot handling security procedures. Keeping such procedures secret, gives the opportunity for ballot substitution or ballot tampering to match possible erroneous electronic counts prior to audits. Without full citizen oversight over elections, the integrity of election outcomes cannot be fully secured. Regardless of its shortcomings, I recommend supporting this version of HR811 and urging your US Senators to support S559, the Senate version, because it would force all states using DREs with thermal paper rolls which violate voter anonymity and do not use durable paper ballot records - to replace their voting systems by 2010; and would implement independent election audits of federal elections for the first time in the United States. The Senate version is S559 by Bill Nelson D-FL. http://senate.gov Please email/write your US Senators and ask them to support S559, but to amend its audit amount with the following language: ------------ (a) In General- Except as provided in subsection (b), the number of voter-verified paper ballots which will be subject to a hand count administered by the Election Audit Board of a State under this subtitle with respect to an election shall be determined as follows: (1) at least 1% (one per centum) of each county's precinct or batch vote counts shall be hand counted; and (2) a sufficient number of precinct or batch vote counts shall be manually counted to give at least a 99% probability for detecting at least one corrupt/miscounted precinct or batch vote count if the amount of corrupt vote counts were sufficient to alter the election outcome of any federal election contest, taking into account the margin between the candidates and the total number of precinct or batch vote counts in the Congressional district involved (in the case of an election for the House of Representatives) or the State (in the case of any other election for Federal office), and assuming that at most x% of any precinct or batch vote count is erroneously counted, where x is set by the US Election Audit and Recount Committeev; and (3) at least one vote count is audited in each election contest submitted to the voters within each county's jurisdiction; and (4) in addition to randomly selected precincts in (1), (2), and (3) above, a small number of discretionary precinct vote counts selected by candidates, or alternatively, precinct vote counts which calculations show are "suspicious" should be manually audited. (b) Use of Alternative Mechanism- Notwithstanding subsection (a), a State may adopt and apply an alternative mechanism to determine the number of voter-verified paper ballots which will be subject to the hand counts required under this subtitle with respect to an election, so long as the National Institute of Standards and Technology determines that the alternative mechanism will be at least as effective in ensuring the accuracy of the election results and as transparent as the procedure under subsection (a). ------------ Further information on why the existing Holt audit amounts are ineffective and administratively burdensome are provided here: Federal Election Audit Costs http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/FederalAuditCosts.pdf Evaluates the cost and effectiveness of three audit proposals using federal election results from 2002 and 2004 US House and Senate elections Fool Me Once: Checking Vote Count Integrity http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/TierElectionAuditEval.pdf -- Kathy Dopp The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at P.O. Box 680192 Park City, UT 84068 phone 435-658-4657 http://utahcountvotes.org http://kathydopp.com http://electionmathematics.org http://electionarchive.org Election Audit Mathematics Bibliography http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/KathyDoppAuditMathBibliography.pdf ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info