I mentioned in an earlier post that I was going to roll out my legislative agenda. This is the fifth – and last- in the series.
I can’t think of anything in our democracy that is more important than making sure that every vote is counted and counted correctly. In 2005, S. 450 was introduced which would have required, among other things, a voter-verified paper record.
The bill didn’t pass and has been continued in succeeding sessions of Congress. The most recent version is S. 804. The problem of verifiable voting hasn’t gone away; the Ohio study that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago points this out.
In our rush to correct the problems with “hanging chads” in the 2000 election, we replaced one bad system with another. And now we have to take steps to fix this system. If money were no object, I’d say throw out the DREs and replace it with the op-scan ballot system everywhere. Unfortunately, that is not the case. At least Virginia passed a law (HB2707 and its companion, SB840) last session that prohibit future purchases of DREs, although the language to require paper trails and audits was stripped from the bill. This year, the effort to move towards paper trails is a modest: the Verifiable Voting Coalition of Virginia is looking to have op-scan ballots counted as a part of the recount process and to have random audits of the machines, whereby the paper is compared to the machine counts. SB35 has been introduced to take care of the first part. I expect there will be legislation for the second part shortly.
If you want to read how the battle is shaping up, take a look at the comments in this post. It’s interesting to me to see who supports paper trails and who doesn’t.
Technorati Tags: Verifiable voting
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
This sounds like a good idea, but how about verifying the voters as well?
How about electronic voting machines that produce punch cards?
And yes, we should have voter ID. I was asked for my ID when I voted in November.
And I was asked for my ID as well, AEM. So voter verification is already in effect.
“And yes, we should have voter ID. I was asked for my ID when I voted in November.”
This is something that I’ve always wondered about in the whole voter ID debate. Like Mouse, I was asked for my ID in November. And the November before that. Indeed, I cannot remember ever going to my polling place and not being asked for my license, even before folks became terrified of immigrants. Which makes me ask two questions:
1. Is it really a problem that folks might be asked to present their IDs when voting if we’re being asked for our IDs already?
2. If we’re already being asked for our IDs, why are people who want them to ask for our IDs complaining that they ought to be checking our IDs?
I just don’t have the strength to think this is a serious issue anymore; from my own personal experience and the experiences of others, it sounds to me like we somehow already resolved the issue without even realizing it.
Can anyone recall a story earlier this year (maybe late last) that took a hard look at all of the (few) actual studies on the impact of Voter ID laws and existence of voter fraud, concluding that neither side had a real claim? My google-fu does not seem to be working at the moment.
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I really can’t understand how opponents of verifiable voting can keep a straight face. It’s such a no brainer. On the other hand, the general public doesn’t appear to care all that much, so . . .
I believe the argument on voter ID is government issued ID cards.
As for the general public on verifiable voting – well, I think they do care.
I think any discussion on electronic voting changes at the moment the participants become aware of the Australia experience. They researched the use of electronic voting, and arrived at the conclusion that any proprietary voting system inherently eliminates voters’ right to vote, because the proprietary voting system prohibits public scrutiny of the voting system. The U.S. has already upheld the secret vote count in court cases as recently as December of 2006.
Their solution was to require all voting systems to utilize an Open Source software approach that enables voters to subject the voting system to public scrutiny, which results in detecting what otherwise would be nondetectable manipulation of the vote count. In the U.S., we permit only proprietary voting systems to be used, and add an additional requirement that voters must prove manipulation of the vote count, or tampering with the vote count, in order to disqualify a particular voting system. Amazing logic for people who pride themselves on being world leaders, wouldn’t you agree?
Once Australia developed their voting system software that guarantees public scrutiny, they posted the software on the Internet, and invited anyone, anywhere in the world, to download the freely available software, modify it, and use it for their own elections. This is extraordinary. We have freely available election software that can sit on cheap desktop computers, and those electronic voting systems are superior to anything a private company can produce. Yet, in spite of the fact these superior voting systems guarantee voters’ right to vote, and in spite of the fact they cost a fraction of what we’re now forced to pay, legislation continues to be sought and dropped over and over, as if there was a solution, but politics prevents it being realized.
OK. We now have the information we need to discuss the nonsensical issues our leaders suggest. Your turn.
Happy New Year!
Tom Poe, Charles City, Iowa
Vivian, the ID I show them was issued to me by the government. I suppose I could have bought a fake one. I suppose I could buy a fake ID specifically for voting, too. And I suppose it’s nice that I can show them a driver’s license that I use every day rather than having to remember to bring a completely different card that I would presumably only use on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November because that would be easy to forget. I suppose it’s inconvenient for people who want to forge a voting-specific ID in that they would have to forge a completely separate ID in order to buy alcohol. Because this is AMERICA, people! I shouldn’t need one fake ID to try and throw an election with a single statistically-insignificant illicit vote and another entirely-separate fake ID to buy a case of Samuel Adams Boston Lager ™ from a local 7-11 when I want to celebrate my ineffectual attempts to queer the system afterwards.
Yeah see I told you. I just can’t take it seriously.
Unlike Tom Poe from Charles City, Iowa, whom I suspect has been forced to take things way too seriously by way too many self-important people for way too long. Cheer up, Tom! It’s over in a few days, and you can spend the rest of January doing what people normally do in January out in the Midwest: trying to stay warm. š
Happy New Year to you, too.