The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on HR 811 on Thursday, September 6. The bill requires states to use vote-counting equipment (in federal elections) that creates a paper trail.
The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on HR 811 on Thursday, September 6. The bill requires states to use vote-counting equipment (in federal elections) that creates a paper trail.
This is a BAD bill! It takes closed proprietary software and adds a paper fig leaf to an inherently insecure design. The solution is to go back to paper ballots with open source preliminary tabulators that can be audited for accuracy by a hand count with humans watching other humans. See BlackBoxVoting.org for details.
EFF’s position paper (pro-HR811):
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005308.php
The brad blog’s position (anti-HR811):
http://www.bradblog.com/?page_id=4194
I support the bill despite its flaws.
It’s true that HR-811 doesn’t plug all the holes electronic voting machines leak our votes through.
However, Holt’s bill has always been an Auditing bill, not a solution. HR-811’s auditing is still intact, and will catch errant software releases and voting machine models red-handed.
HR-811 will create the mass public awareness of the danger of DREs, and make sweeping changes we’d all like to see (I like hand-count paper ballots, myself) politically possible for the first time.