Once again, just before Congress adjourned, the Republican Party has stifled any progress into reform of the flaws of HAVA, and are desperately clinging to electronic voting as their only hope to stay in power. (Interestingly,
the two states that ban or restrict "exit polling" are Ohio and Florida.)
Rep Vern Ehlers (R-MI), the new head of the House Administration Committee (replacing the corrupt Bob Ney who recently resigned), felt forced to convene a kangaroo court on the issue, now that a majority of the House has co-sponsored Rush Holt's H.R. 550.
Check out the detailed report on the hearing in "Misinformation and Missed Opportunities".
Then contact your Congressperson and get them signed on as a co-sponsor of H.R. 550 if they aren't already.
From the
article:
Note: There is also a webcast of the hearing available.
On the next-to-last day before Congress went into recess until after the November elections, a hearing was held on the security of electronic voting machines. Thursday's hearing of the Committee on House Administration was orchestrated to establish that there is no consensus about the need for requiring an independent auditable means of verification on voting machines. While not explicitly a hearing on Rep. Rush Holt's "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act" (HR 550), which is now co-sponsored by a majority of members of the House, there was little doubt that the bill's overwhelming support had motivated Chairman Vernon Ehlers (R-MI, pictured at right) to schedule the hearing at all.
At no point did any of the witnesses or Committee members succeed in diminishing the impact of the frightening reality of Prof. Felten's demonstration: when votes are counted by software, election results can be corrupted, intentionally or through errors, that corruption can be undetectable, and, in the case of DREs, there is no way to recover.
However, like a city council defending their decision to purchase a fleet of Ford Pintos for their police force, some witnesses did all they could to dismiss the nationwide concern about the accuracy and reliability of electronic voting systems as the work of a handful of vocal activists. Michael Shamos referred to "scare tactics by a minority".Rep. Holt later pointed out that the provisions of his legislation are endorsed by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, The Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, and The League of Women Voters. He could have included the Gov. Ehrlich (R) of Maryland and Gov. Richardson (D) of New Mexico and 22 of his colleagues in the majority caucus of the House. As Rep. Holt noted this is hardly "a scary minority."
Let's make sure Congress knows that we are "a scary majority", and we're watching.