Question about Black Box Voting....

[Postman]

I'm new to what is going on with this "paperless touch screen voting" thing that is trying to be pushed.

Is there a standard form letter I can copy and send to my Congressional Reps. to investigate this fraud?

I think we should demand a paper printout of our votes if they want to institute a touch screeen voting system.

[MoonGod]

1. There were a couple standard letters...

... on a couple websites a while back.. not sure if I could find 'em now (no time presently)

However, all you need are 10 words: "Support The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003"

Those 10 words will be as effective as any form letter you might choose to copy.

http://holt.house.gov/issues2.cfm?id=5996

That bill would clear up 90% of the problems. The one issue it doesn't address is to explicitly state that the paper record must only contain vote information in a human-readable format (no bar codes or anything like that... easily OCR'ed fonts are fine, though), so you may want to add something along the lines of "... and amend the act to explicitly state that the paper record is in human readable format only."

[scarletwoman]

2. sample letter:

go to: http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2754

Your U.S. representative


Dear Representative,

I am a constituent who cares strongly about ensuring security and trust in elections and I urge you to cosponsor the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (VCIAA, HR 2239). As touchscreen voting (e-voting) technology is adopted across America, it's absolutely vital that these new systems meet basic standards of accountability and openness. I am particularly concerned that many systems do not use open source software and cannot provide a voter verifiable paper audit trail. Unless a paper record is generated by publicly reviewed software, verified by the voter, and retained for potential recounts, I believe that this technology is too insecure for use in our elections.

The public should be allowed to review the software that runs these machines in order to confirm that they act in the way that the manufacturer claims. Right now, however, the leading technologies are not only proprietary, they are covered by trade secret claims. This kind of closed source, or "black box," software lacks any kind of independent quality assurance. In fact, a recent analysis of one company's software revealed gaping security holes that could be exploited by anyone from a technically proficient insider to an average voter with a few dollars worth of technology in her pocket. You can read the paper here:

http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf

This underscores how important open source software is for our elections. HR 2239 would require voting machines to use publicly reviewed software.

HR 2239 would also mandate voter verifiable paper audit trails for all new e-voting machines, a prerequisite for accountability and accuracy. The 2000 presidential election was a painful lesson in the failings of current voting technology, but at least there was a back-up system that allowed a manual recount when evidence emerged that the regular voting process was flawed. Without a paper audit trail, a compromised e-voting system could not provide even the cold comfort of Florida's manual recount. Luckily, adding this protection to the machines is not hard and does not have to add a significant amount to the cost of each unit.

I strongly urge you to cosponsor HR 2239 to ensure that all new e-voting machine purchases provide a voter-verifiable paper audit trail and use publicly reviewed software. Thank you for your time.


Sincerely,
(your name)

Lots of information at: http://blackboxvoting.org/ and http://www.blackboxvoting.com/

Also see: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/index.asp

Glad to know this issue is getting attention!

sw