Comments on: Politicians call for e-voting paper trails by '08 election

Troubled by irregularities, they say it's urgent to enact federal laws requiring voter-verifiable records of ballots cast.

[PR Finn]

The Holt Bill Misleads with term paper "ballots"

While nearly everybody wants something the public can see, feel and verify as the ballot in the election, in order to avoid invisible secret vote counting on electronic machines resulting in the worst kind of "faith-based elections", the Holt bill's much hyped paper "ballots" aren't really ballots.

They don't get counted on the first count, like real ballots do, the electronic ballots get counted first under the fine print of holt.

Second, even though the sign Holt requires says that the paper ballots count for "All Recounts and Audits" this too is not true. If your state triggers an automatic recount, there are NO holt audits. But if that automatic recount is a machine recount --- the touch screens are just asked to print out the same results slip a second time --- not a meaningful recount or audit at all, and those Holt paper ballots are totally useless.

This happens in close races (no audits) when it matters the most! A truly poor drafted bill.

Holt also adds unfunded mandates, federalizes elections and puts the present administration in charge of elections -- something the Founders would have abhorred since it allows a President or executive branch to control all of the elections during its term, which is one recipe for abuse of power, which the Framers called tyranny.

EAch and every Holt provision requires detailed study by experts including lawyers, statisticians and elections experts in order to deem its true effects. Reading a press release and its hype will get us NOWHERE in terms of a true understanding of the true effects of the bill on our elections. Also missing is that much more work is needed on public oversight and restoring that so that citizens can provide the checks and balances in elections that the government can't -- because it gets its money and power from elections.

We the People are the boss in elections, we are being asked for the consent of the governed. The roles are reversed then, and Congress should, if they truly are servants of the people, falling all over themselves to create public oversight and to creat public rights in elections. Instead its more about facilitating the vendors and creating more sales opportunities for them with yet more techno-requirements that are buried in the bill.

[PDA Laura]

Holt Bill imperfect

I tend to agree with your assessment PR. The bill is imperfect, better than what we've got, but why not go for the whole enchilada and ban the DREs all together?

That's the whole problem right there, voters need actual ballots to mark, not a machine generated register tape. If the language were amended to reflect the ban, I could support it, even with the other flaws.

[bemenaker]

One sec

Large parts of your argument are based on the way things happen now, not the way they are intending them happen, once paper ballots are available. Or at least that is how it comes across.

[jskrenes]

There will always be security compromises

With paper ballots, there is the risk of stuffing the ballot box. With electronic voting, that problem doesn't go away, it just shifts to another area. If the ballot machines hook up to the internet or even a government intranet, they can be hacked. If it is not connected, the hard drives or memory sticks with the votes on them could be swapped.

As much as I dislike "big government," it seems redundancy might be useful here: the more layers there are to voting, the less likely they are to be compromised.

My biggest two problems with this bill is if it becomes an unfunded mandate, it could both put undue strain on state and local governments as well as take away control from those same governments on how voting is conducted.

[My-Self]

Paper trail makes them useless ...

Paper trail ? what a crazy idea !
I mean, the whole point of having E-Voting systems is that the vendor can skew the result toward the politician who buy them. If there is a paper trail, why on earth would any politician buy those useless pieces of junk ? Paper trail works best without those machines, it's called paper ballots and when properly done, it's still the best way to vote (from a citizen's point of vue)