Repair Election Process, Then We Can Fix the Country

On July 19th, committees in the US House of Representatives held a hearing to review the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) required by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) (article here). Unfortunately, they showed that they still just don’t get it. As electronic voting machines are installed in more and more locations, it becomes all the more imperative that Congress implement laws that require verifiable vote counts and mandatory audits, to insure that the election results are accurate.

With each passing election, there have been many examples where electronic votes were just plain lost – erased by malfunction, and were unrecoverable, because there were no printed ballots. There have also been many examples of some very suspect election results, when compared with what has historically been very accurate exit polling data. Federal law must be changed to require voter-verified paper records (VVPR) to prevent future loss of votes, as well as provide a way to do a recount. Presently, to do a recount on non-VVPR systems, technicians simply push a button there and twist a knob over here, and voila! The system spits out the same number it gave before.

Voting machines are now made by three major companies, all claiming "proprietary rights" to the software they install – meaning they own the software, and no one can see it. This is preposterous. These are public elections we’re talking about, not some new mp3 player. We have a right to see how the votes are being counted, and in fact an obligation to inspect and verify that it is being done correctly. This is especially urgent because we know that when software codes have been leaked, and studied by independent software experts, they have been found to have gaping security holes, allowing "back door" access to manipulate results, and worse, leave no trace. Currently the "testing" of software is allowed to be done by "experts" chosen and paid for by the vendors themselves.

As Kevin Shelley, former California Secretary of State who was forced out under questionable circumstances, said, "The core of our American democracy is the right to vote. Implicit in that right is the notion that that vote be private, that vote be secure, and that vote be counted as it was intended when it was cast by the voter. And I think what we're encountering is a pivotal moment in our democracy where all of that is being called into question."

As our country careens down an unsustainable path of war, government corruption, crippling debt and environmental irresponsibility, now more than ever, we need to be able to trust our electoral process. (And we also need to take the corrupting big money out of politics, so that elected officials once again work for the people, and not to pay back their corporate sponsors with legislative favors. But that’s another issue.)

We can do these things, but it won’t be easy. Each and every one of us who desires to live in a true democracy, no matter our politics, must pressure Congress to change. Write and phone your representatives in support of bills like the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act" – HR550, introduced by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), which requires VVPR and mandatory audits and now has 201 co-sponsors. Write letters to editors, talk to your friends and neighbors.

As the oft-quoted line, attributed to Josef Stalin, goes, "It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes." Well, it’s both, and we need people to have faith in the process if we’re to have any hope that they will keep voting.

For more info: www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org, www.blackboxvoting.org, www.votersunite.org, www.evoting-experts.com, www.wheresthepaper.org