Democrats and Republicans in the US House of Representatives agreed today on a compromise that will push through a bill banning paperless voting machines and requiring a voter-verified paper record for every vote in the country, after government sanctioned hackers showed how they could break into all three of the top voting systems used in California.
The agreement by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey will advance H.R. 811, the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007," (H.R. 811) which amends the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require a voter-verified permanent paper ballot.
"Today's announcement gives Americans renewed hope that Congress will soon put an end to unaccountable, unverifiable, and inaccessible voting," said Ralph G. Neas, president of the advocacy group People For the American Way. "Millions of voters were disenfranchised in recent elections, and millions of others have wondered if their votes were correctly counted. That is intolerable. Given how much is at stake in the coming elections, passing this legislation should be the nation's top domestic legislative priority."
The amendment ensures that by the 2008 presidential elections there will be a paper record for all votes cast in federal elections, and makes the paper ballot the ballot of record for purposes of a recount and puts in place a system of mandatory random audits.
On technical aspects, the bill prohibits wireless devices in voting machines, and makes voting system source code subject to examination should discrepancies arise.
The agreement obligates the provision for emergency paper ballots should voting machines break down or fail in any way, mandates upgrades to provide durable paper records and enhanced accessible technology by 2012.
The Bush Crime Cartel
The republican party already has a work-around this paper trail for voting machines.
Your only shitting yourself if you think the elections are going to be legitimate and on the up and up.
3/4 of government is on the take or work for the Bush Crime Cartel in Washington DC (District of Criminals)
There's work on verifiable voting systems
Trustable voting systems -- where the entity running the vote is unable to cheat without being detected, but where the privacy of the individual ballot is maintained -- have been a topic of research in cryptography circles for quite some time.
Thing is, the companies who've been building electronic voting systems commercially haven't implemented any of these protocols (see Punchscan or Prêt à Voter for examples), leaving the individual voter without a way to verify whether their vote was included (or the losing party a way to ensure that the counting was done correctly), let alone a mechanism by which an official audit can ensure that its recount is more accurate than the original.
Reliable voting systems are available, and they're much better than traditional balloting mechanisms; the truly unfortunate thing is that their visibility is (thus far) limited mostly to academia and interested folks in computing, rather than making it out to Real World implementations.
they are trying to put a
they are trying to put a little bit of credibility to the election racket. democracy is just an illusion my friends. stalin said: "it is not the people who vote that counts, it is who count the votes."
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