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On the Issues HOLT BILL - H.R. 811 Update, February 25, 2008 On-line petitions in support of the Emergency Holt Bill, HR 5036 Verified Voting: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/199/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=22334 Move-on: http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/?r_by=-639921-DPMKLl&rc=mailto Update, January 29, 2008 Provisions of New Holt Bill, HR 5036 . Click here for full details. Update, November 7, 2007 SAE Update This bill has been worked on in committee until many of the fine qualities in the original bill have been watered down or removed. Representative Susan Davis of San Diego has introduced an amendment which would place restrictions on electronic voting machines and touch screens in particular that are similar to those imposed by California's Secretary of State Debra Bowen. The House Rules Committee will decide which amendments it will allow to reach the floor once the bill is ready. The committee would prefer a closed rule (no amendments) but Davis' amendment has a great deal of support. Currently there are 22 States that do not have a voter verified paper ballot and 37 States that do not mandate any random audits of voter verified paper ballots. See an excellent map at the Verified Voting site of http://www.verifiedvoting.org/ Update, September 7, 2007 http://www.house.gov/susandavis/iss_elecreform.shtml Congresswoman Susan A. Davis Representing the 53rd District in San Diego, California PRESS RELEASE September 5, 2007 Rep. Susan Davis’s Statement to Restrict the Use of DRE Electronic Voting Machines WASHINGTON – Congresswoman Susan Davis (D-Calif) released the following statement on her effort to offer an amendment to Rep. Rush Holt’s bill (H.R. 811) to ban paperless voting. “Electoral integrity is of the utmost importance to guaranteeing our democracy and I support many of the provisions of Rep. Rush Holt’s bill (H.R. 811) and respect the thought behind it. “However, as we have looked closely at all the issues concerning Election Day voting systems, we are still ignoring the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Although Rep. Holt’s bill has looked at many tough issues, there is one controversial issue that seems to come up again and again in my discussions with voters, activists and elections officials. It is an issue that has been dealt with in many states including my home state of California just recently with the Secretary of State’s Top-to-Bottom review. The wealth of data and opinions on this topic are so strong that I feel Congress would be remiss if we do not allow a debate on the question of whether and how Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) Voting Machines should be used in federal elections. “In an attempt spark debate on this issue, I proposed an amendment to H.R. 811 allowing every polling place to have one DRE with a paper trail for those who want or need to use it—sort of a paper or plastic option. And of course, early voting could be done electronically because it makes the most sense when voters from any of thousands of precincts show up to vote in the same place and stocking all the different paper ballots can be a nightmare. What’s more, problems of the past such as long lines from broken machines or elections with no record like we saw in Florida’s 13th Congressional District could not happen. There would be fewer problems that lead to long lines and disenfranchisement, people with disabilities could vote privately, a true paper record would be available for recounts and costs would shrink. “It is my hope that Congress will address this issue in the near future. Our democracy is too important to ignore this issue any longer.” ### Take Action! See the Citizen's Action Alert #3. Update, May 2007 - 2 THUMBS DOWN ON THE HOLT BILL, HR 811 Secure - Accurate - Elections says no to the Holt Bill, H.R. 811. At its May 20 meeting SAE members voted unanimously to not support the Holt Bill in its present form. While SAE definitely supports a paper trail over no trail at all, the group felt too many “poison pills” were introduced into the legislation as it has passed through the House of Representatives this session. Among the “poison pills” found in the Bill is placing more control over elections to the Presidency. The Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) has functioned poorly and gains more authority under HR 811. One particularly upsetting aspect of this bill allows the President to name all 4 members to the EAC. The majority and minority parties in the House and Senate may each nominate 2 persons for the EAC. From that point it is the President who chooses the final members of the EAC. In this age of the “Imperial Presidency” the more authority the Presidency holds over elections, the worse the idea. Some other pills, HR 811 is greatly under funded and at the same time calls for even more complex technology that does not exist at present. In addition, the bill allows for nondisclosed software and requires public officials to sign nondisclosure agreements with evoting vendors. For these and other reasons it is the opinion of SAE that the Holt Bill should not be passed in its present form. In the interest of all our readers, however, we will continue to update this page with both pro and con arguments, in addition to any changes that are made to H.R. 811. PROS AND CONS of HR 811 The voting integrity activist community objects to the term “Paper Trail.” The term “Paper Ballot” is essential to establishing the fact that the paper ballot is the “ballot of record” and officially takes precedence over any electronic count. The Holt Bill uses the term VVPAT or Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail. PROS  According to People For The American Way PAPER BALLOTS Requires all systems in 2008 to provide paper ballots of record. Paper of durable quality, thus outlawing thermal paper now used in SD County. Paper shall be able to withstand multiple counts and recount without compromising the integrity of the ballot. Ballots must be maintained for 22 months which also disqualifies thermal paper. Will not permit use of confusing reel-to-reel printing (usually on thermal paper) and must provide the voter with an opportunity to correct mistakes on the ballot of record. Demise of reel-to-reel systems would be a positive step, given that these systems not only potentially compromise the secrecy of the ballot, but recounts and audits using long reels of papers have been demonstrated to be difficult, if not impractical. RECOUNTS Paper ballots (whether optical scan ballot or VVPAT) must be counted by hand as the official ballots. Paper trumps electronic tallies in both audits and recounts. AUDITS Sets up a comprehensive framework of mandatory manual audits, conducted by mandatory state election audit boards. Sec. 321 of the bill requires that each state appoint an Election Audit Board, and Sec. 322 sets up a tiered auditing approach that is designed to detect problems in an election, no matter how close the margin of victory. Audit scheme endorsed by experts, including computer science and statistical experts, under the auspices of the Brennan Center for Justice. Mandates audits be random. Bill authorizes federal funds be dispersed to cover the costs of audits. SOURCE CODE All source code must be disclosed on demand (no secret source codes). Software must be certified by the State. WIRELESS/INTERNET This bill explicitly outlaws any wireless technology in elections. EAC - ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION The PFAW has the EAC on their list of positives. The Election Integrity community believes that the agency gives too much authority to the President. Presently this agency is composed of four presidential appointees. These appointees are submitted by the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader of the Senate, and the Minority Leaders in the House and Senate. The EAC, under the Holt bill, would be required to enforce the national standards expressly listed in the statute. This would include paper ballots, recounts, manual audits, etc. Limits the powers of the EAC. Would no longer have free reign to develop voluntary voting systems guidelines. COST Holt Bill authorizes at least 300 million dollars with the possibility of authorizing more. This provision basically requires each precinct to have a scanner (either optical scan or character-recognition, depending on the type of paper ballot) that can independently read the ballot back to the voter. SECRET BALLOTS Ensures the secrecy of ballots cast by the military and overseas voters. “The voting system shall not preserve the voter-verifiable paper ballots in any manner that makes it possible, at any time after the ballot has been cast, to associate a voter with the record of the voter’s vote.”   CONS Mostly taken from Black Box Voting Black Box Voting contacted Rep. Holt’s office and received answers to some of these complaints. Answers are listed below the problem. Calls for a paper TRAIL, not a paper BALLOT. Costs: - BBV says that this is a billion dollar unfunded mandate due to the requirement that text conversion technology is in every polling place. At $7,000 per machine for 185,000 polling places, this is over a billion dollars. Also BBV says there are only two venders that make these machines. Holt’s office says there are more than two venders: AutoMARK, Inka Vote, Inspire Voting Systems, Tactile ballot with audio input and verification wand, Populex - has a bar code for read-back (text to speech) and other off-the-shelf technology. Holt’s office does not deny the high cost of many of these machines. Secure Accurate Elections own research has shown that currently DRE touch screens with VVPT are twice as expensive as optical scanners. Five DRE machines with printers at one precinct costs $20,000. One optical scanner and one ballot marking device at one precinct would cost $10,000. Election Assistance Commission. Increases power and makes permanent the scandal-ridden EAC. Gives too much power to the President. The four person commission is appointed by the President with input from the Senate and House.This is a major concern. Holt’s office says that HR811 would give less power to the EAC than in previous versions since the EAC has no authority over audits. Allows loss of secret ballots for the military. Although the language of the bill protects the privacy of the military voter, it still allows for electronic delivery of the vote. There is an exception to the privacy statements that reads - “except that to the extent that such protocols permit the use of electronic mail in the delivery to submission of such ballots, paragraph (11) shall not apply with respect to the delivery or submission of the ballots.” No Recognition of Citizen Right to oversight. Audit provisions do not allow either citizens or candidates access to any records for meaningful audits. Does not address the concerns of citizens who want the right to watch the counting of the vote as well as oversight of the voting process. Does not address concerns of citizens who can not get meaningful information in a timely manor from local Registrar of Voters, thus making it difficult to contest elections before they are certified. Conflicting requirements - i.e., must have text converters by 2008 and must study how to best do the conversions by 2010. Holt’s office answer to this complaint was - “Upon reviewing available systems, it was recommended that in the short term, the various jurisdictions could lease equipment for one election cycle. That also allows time for more research which would hopefully allow better equipment to be developed before the following election cycle.” BBV answers: “Is it possible to lease AutoMarks or whatever in 100,000 jurisdictions at once, then maybe give them back? Wouldn’t a lease of that size require the manufacturer to gear up a gigantic special manufacturing run, along with staffing for support?” Language on disclosed source code contains an error. Language on disclosed source contains an error in that it doesn’t deal with COTS. COTS stands for Commercial Off-The-Shelf software, i.e., a commercial software product. BBV says that the language is mushy and unreadable Audit protocols: The fear is that even with the tiers, in Congressional races, which have the fewest precincts, the audit will not be robust even to detect fraud, especially in close elections. Holt’s office answered with this document with an impressive list of authors: http://www.brennancenter.org/dynamic/subpages/download_file_47860.pdf Includes charts as to reliability levels. Another paper dealing with audits is: http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/ElectionIntegrityAudit.pdf BBV says that loopholes allow internet connections and bypassing of manual audits. Loophole allowing machine count to supersede voter verified paper. Holt’s office reiterates that in no case does the language of the bill permit paper ballots to be superseded by electronic counts. Pointed out section D) SPECIAL RULE FOR TREATMENT OF DISPUTES WHEN PAPER BALLOTS HAVE BEEN SHOWN TO BE COMPROMISED BBV says that the words “damage or mischief or otherwise” is too broad and vague. BBV asks “Where is the language to protect voters where one could also demonstrate that the machine count had been “compromised” or might have been compromised?” They argue that “you could steal a single paper ballot, then claim the paper ballots had been compromised, therefore a machine count (using dodgy software) would be accepted instead.” Supports DRE’s Optical scanners and DRE’s are both vulnerable to manipulation and inaccurate vote counts. See Ellen Theisen’s document: http://www.votersunite.org/info/mapVoteSwitch.pdf DRE’s are more vulnerable, more complex and present more attack points. They have video drivers, touch screen panels, encoder card functions, etc. DRE’s are more expensive and therefore less cost efficient to the taxpayer Harri Hursti reveals that DRE’s with Diebold have three layers of vulnerabilities. More info: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/32863.html Avi Rubin, famous for bringing to light vulnerabilities in Diebold Election Systems's Accuvote electronic voting machines, comes out in support of the Holt Bill (HR 811). Read the 2/17/07 entry from his blog: http://avi-rubin.blogspot.com/2007/02/hr-811-new-holt-bill.html 5/28/2007, Election reform activist Nancy Tobi argues against the Holt Bill: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_070528_hr_811__28the_holt_bil.htm May, 2007, Election Defense Alliance argues very effectively against the Holt Bill, provides excellent info including talking points and contact information for representatives: http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/Halt811 06/13/07, "HR 811: Separating Truth From Fiction in E-voting Reform PRO argument for HR 811" This is a PRO argument for HR 811. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005308.php#005308 07/11/07, "Exposé: Holt bill was revised by Microsoft, Diebold and ES&S," OpEdNews article by Mark Crispin Miller. Alarming article about voting machine companies revising HR 811 http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_mark_cri_070711_expose__3b_rush_holt_2c_.htm 07/15/07, Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP), San Diego, Politcal Action Spirit Group's plan for halting HR 811 and SB 1487 http://www.secureelections.org/nspholtplan.htm