Friday update (02/29): Verifiable voting

Weekly update of my legislative agenda issue.

I haven’t updated this issue for a couple of weeks because things have been moving along quite slowly. Here’s a rundown of the bills that I’ve discussed in prior posts.

SB292 (Herring), introduced as a bill to have random audits of op-scan tabulators within 24 hours after the initial vote counts are completed and before the results are certified, has been changed so much that the only thing it has in common with the original is the bill number. Instead of random audits, it is now a pilot audit program in localities that choose to participate. Instead of the audits taking place between the initial vote counts and the certification, they now take place after the results are certified. To top it off, such audits can only take place if the margin between the top two candidates exceeds 10%.

Call me cynical but in its current form, this bill does exactly what? I know that legislation is generally in the form of baby steps but I wouldn’t even call this a baby step. A baby inch, maybe. What are the legislators – or, better yet, the SBE – afraid of? If they have so much confidence in the voting systems, why limit the voluntary pilot program (sheesh!) to races where the margin is so large? From an email I received:

The concern is that an audit might find something wrong that would throw an election into doubt. Those of you who think it would be useful to know whether a machine error led to the wrong result will please keep your mouths shut.

Yep, that about sums it up. This “bill” has passed both houses.

SB35 (Deeds), which will require that hard copy op-scan ballots be rerun through the machines in the event of a recount, passed the Senate 2/8 and is now in the House P&E subcommittee on Elections. A hearing of this bill has been put off several times. As of this writing, it was scheduled to be heard at Friday morning’s meeting. I’ll update this post later today once I get more info.

A little good news. As I mentioned earlier, SB685 (Colgan), which seeks to overturn last year’s legislation prohibiting additional purchases of DRE machines, and HB638 (May) which not only seeks to overturn the legislation on DREs, like SB685, but also changes the process of securing voting equipment, deserved to be defeated. Both bills were continued to 2009.

A few others. SB62 (Howell), which deals with registration receipts, and SB536 (Barker), which deals with additional testing of voting machines, are both in the House Appropriations committee. SB52 (Whipple), which deals with wireless communications, has passed and is awaiting the Governor’s signature.

UPDATE: SB35 reported out of committee this morning, with a change to remove one line that had been proposed by Deeds, as shown below:

If, on all direct electronic voting devices, the number of persons voting in the election, or the number of votes cast for the office or on the question, totals more than the number of names on the pollbooks of persons voting on the devices, the figures recorded by the devices shall be accepted as correct so long as the discrepancy is not sufficient to affect the outcome of the election.

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