The Holt Bill H.R. 811, and the MoveOn.org "poll"

On Sep. 1, MoveOn.org Political Action sent members an email asking them to vote on whether MoveOn should support Rep. Rush Holt's election reform bill, H.R. 811.

This article discusses the problems with H.R. 811 and the problems MoveOn has in how it is handling this (and other) Election Integrity issues.

H.R. 811 is on the docket to be voted on this week in the House of Representatives. Contact your Representative now!

MoveOn ignores most of the issues

H.R. 811 is 60 pages long. MoveOn's summary is less than 20 lines. It leaves out many, many issues, and does not give links to any further discussion. How can you ask for direction on a very complicated and technical issue, with providing background?

Ellen Theisen's article, Rush Holt's HR 811 Does More Harm than Good , lists "Seven Serious Failures in the Latest Holt Election Reform Bill":

Under HR 811, some [actually most] "ballots" don't have to ever be counted.
Secret [proprietary] vote-counting is endorsed.
Audits are inadequate and contain an invitation to tamper.
The "ban" on electronic communications and networking is incomplete and convoluted.
The impossible is required [with respect to escrow].
Massive voter disenfranchisement caused by broken machines will remain in 2008 and beyond.
The dysfunctional Election Assistance Commission is made permanent.

MoveOn lists H.R. 811 supporters, but not opponents

MoveOn lists PFAW, the Brennan Center, and Common Cause as supporting H.R. 811. It does not list opponents. In fact, most of the Election Integrity community either opposes H.R. 811 or has not taken a stand.

The following organizations have campaigns asking Congress to not pass H.R. 811 unless it is amended to ban electronic voting machines:

People's Email Network (P.E.N.) and OpEdNews.com: Just Say No to HR 811! Choose people power over corporate power,
Voters Unite!: Take Action: Contact Congress to Ban Electronic Ballots,
Velvet Revolution: Ask Congress for a paper ballot, not a paper trail,
Progressive Democrats of America: Vote to Amend Holt's HR 811, or Vote No.

Others opposing the compromise include:

Brad Friedman, of BradBlog.com, the leading source of Election Integrity news,
Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org; calls it a "heresy to a democratic republic",
Mark Crispin Miller, author of "Fooled Again, How the Right Stole the 2004 Elections",
Dennis Kucinich; in his letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
John Gideon, co-director of Voters Unite! and editor of the Daily Voting News,
Ellen Theisen, founder of and co-director of Voters Unite!,
The Election Defense Alliance, HR 811 Unsafe for Democracy! Halt Holt!.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen said:

I've worked with the author to try to strengthen the bill, but have not taken a position in support. Again, I am concerned that if we put the whole concept of a voter verified paper trail into statute and it's something that we know is problematic ... , we may find ourselves, once again, trying to improve something that's very expensive and that we'd better do right in the first place. (from audio linked in this article.)

Paper ballots or paper trails?

MoveOn refers to the bill as Holt's "paper ballots bill, H.R. 811". Most people think a paper ballot is a piece of paper or cardboard to be marked by pen or pencil, like an absentee ballot. But H.R. 811 also considers the tiny strips of paper produced by electronic voting machines to be "paper ballots".

Moreover, most of these "paper ballots" will never be counted. Instead the totals of the electronic ballots in the machines are used, and the paper strips are used only if there is an audit or recount. I believe calling this a "paper ballots bill" is misleading.

Recent developments - Secretary Bowen's findings

Secretary of State Debra Bowen commissioned a Top-To-Bottom Review of California voting systems. The findings included:

Several attacks will work on electronic voting machines despite the presence of a voter verified paper audit trail.
It's easy to bypass the physical security measures installed by the vendors, such as tamper evident seals, without any trace of tampering.
Malicious code planted on Sequoia or Diebold electronic voting machines could infect the central tabulator and change the entire election.

Since the voting machines are distributed throughout the jurisdiction days or weeks before the election, the last two findings put the entire election at risk.

H.R. 811 would provide over a billion dollars to add paper trails to existing electronic voting machines, and to buy new electronic voting machines. Does this make sense given the ease of attack?

Other developments -

An independent report on the 2006 primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio showed that 10% of the paper trails were either missing or unusable (The Coming Paper-Trail Debacle?). It also found "one in six electronic voter tallies did not match the election's paper trail" (Report on Diebold Voting Machine Fiasco Triggers Dem Outrage).

Dan Rather Reports on HD.net showed Sequoia intentionally sabotaged the paper ballots sent to Palm Beach County in 2000 (and only to Palm Beach County). This explains the hanging chads. The program also reported on how ES&S has for years ignored the fact that the touch screens in their iVotronic voting machines often don't work properly. These are the machines used in Sarasota County, where there were 18,000 missing votes in a Congressional race. See Dan Rather Reports, Episode 227, " The Trouble with Touch Screens" or, for an indexed transcript of the one hour program, click here.

New Jersey passed a law in July, 2005 requiring paper trails on electronic voting machines. In July, 2007, New Jersey tested three paper trail systems submitted by vendors, and found they did not meet the specification in the law! (New Jersey Tests Find Flaws in Printer Performance, Could Jeopardize Election Accuracy).

Amendments have destroyed H.R. 811

H.R. 811 originally mandated public disclosure of all the source code used in programming the election system, with vendors retaining their proprietary rights. Due to heavy lobbying by Microsoft and others, amendments have removed this public right. Instead, only "qualified experts" under restricted circumstances would be able to see the source after they have signed non-disclosure agreements. This would, for the first time, codify in law that our votes may be counted by secret code, code which we can not examine. As Teresa Hommel of WheresThePaper says:

"These paragraphs explicitly sell out American democracy to corporate commercial interests. The EAC and vendors, without other stakeholders such as states, parties, and citizens, will develop a process to protect private interests from public knowledge of how our elections are conducted."

The amendments also weakened the voter's right to request a paper ballot, if she didn't want to use an electronic voting machine.

The amendments move the implementation dates back. Many of the other benefits which were to be in force for the 2008 election will only take effect in 2010 or 2012. With the amendments, a jurisdiction with paperless electronic voting machines will be able to buy paper trail printers for their electronic voting machines and use them until 2012.

They also remove the requirement that the paper used in the paper trail be "durable". So now jurisdictions will be able to buy machines with flimsy paper unsuitable for recounts and audits.

They also added a requirement that voters not be required to handle a paper ballot.

There are no existing systems, either electronic or not, that meet the stated requirements for 2012. The one billion dollars appropriated in this bill may be spent on systems which must be replaced by 2012.

The bill assigns to the Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) a host of new powers and responsibilities. This is an agency which has been rocked by scandals this year:

The EAC changed the text and conclusions of their consultant's report on voter fraud (voting twice, voting for dead people, etc.), and would not allow the authors to comment on the changes for months (A Rigged Report on U.S. Voting?).
The EAC suppressed their consultant's report on the effect of voter ID laws, until forced to reveal it.
The EAC refused to accredit Ciber Inc. to continue testing election systems since Ciber did not keep any records of the results of the required tests. However, the EAC did not reveal this, so that elections officials continued relying on Ciber test results. Ciber has certified systems used by about 70-80% of the voters nationally. The problem was revealed six months after the fact in a New York Times article.
The EAC guidelines, against which systems are tested, contains a huge loophole that allows testers to pass a system even if it doesn't meet the EAC guidelines! (See section B.5 of Volume 2 of the Guidelines).

Do we really want to greatly increase the EAC's power and responsibilities?

Is MoveOn out of touch for Election Integrity issues?

MoveOn's messages on Election Integrity always come from Noah Winer, who is MoveOn's Media Action Director. I am on many Election Integrity mailing lists, have attended many conferences, and read much on Election Integrity. However, I have never seen anyone identifying themselves with MoveOn in any of those places in the past few years. I think if MoveOn wants to play a role, they should have someone spend who can spend a considerable amount of time on Election Integrity issues. If not, they shouldn't issue alerts just because someone at PFAW or Common Cause tells them to.

What if I voted already in the MoveOn poll?

If you still have the MoveOn email and want to change your vote, try voting again. I'm not sure what this does; there is no error message, so it is worth a try.

Additional resources:

Brad Blog's H.R. 811 resource page

Black Box Voting

Bruce Schneier's CryptoGram Newsletter - lead article is on Voting Systems and presents an entirely different perspective on security.

Extracts from the email to MoveOn members:

MoveOn: Dear MoveOn member,
MoveOn: 
MoveOn: With time running out to secure our voting machines before the 2008
MoveOn: election, Democratic leaders have negotiated a compromise version
MoveOn: of Rep. Rush Holt's paper ballots bill, H.R. 811.
MoveOn: 
MoveOn: It's not ideal, but we need to decide if we'll support it anyway.
MoveOn: On the one hand, the compromise is imperfect. On the other, it's
MoveOn: our only chance to make significant national progress before the
MoveOn: 2008 election.
MoveOn: 
MoveOn: Read more about the compromise below, then let us know if you think
MoveOn: MoveOn should support the current version of the Holt bill:
MoveOn: ...
MoveOn: The Holt paper ballots bill has met with strong concern from many
MoveOn: disability rights groups because electronic voting machines offered
MoveOn: many people with disabilities their first opportunity ever to vote
MoveOn: independently. Some technology does exist to make paper ballots
MoveOn: accessible, but not all disability groups feel it's adequate.
MoveOn: 
MoveOn: The compromise Holt bill requires all electronic voting machines
MoveOn: to include paper trails by 2008, but it allows the use of cash
MoveOn: register-style printers that are not great for reliable voter-verification.
MoveOn: Some counties will also be allowed to buy new electronic voting
MoveOn: machines.
MoveOn: 
MoveOn: By 2012, the bill would ban these more error-prone paper trails and
MoveOn: require durable paper ballots instead. The bill would not ban
MoveOn: electronic voting machines altogether, but it would make the durable
MoveOn: paper ballots the vote of record and would require manual audits
MoveOn: to ensure accurate counts.
MoveOn: 
MoveOn: The compromise bill is supported by Common Cause, the Brennan Center
MoveOn: for Justice, and People for the American Way. Some of the leading
MoveOn: groups we've worked with for years to secure voting machines. There
MoveOn: are other groups who have long opposed the Holt bill because it
MoveOn: doesn't ban electronic voting machines.
MoveOn: 
MoveOn: MoveOn is a member-directed organization, so we have to make this
MoveOn: tough call together. Should MoveOn support the latest version of
MoveOn: the Holt bill?