Vendors Against HR 811 Amendments to HAVA -All Your Votes Are Belong to Us

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

The Voting Machine Companies letter to congress -

~ ALL YOUR VOTES ARE BELONG TO US ~

Election Technology Council Comments on Help America Vote Act Amendments

The Election Technology Council (ETC) consists of companies that offer voting system technology hardware products, software and services to support the electoral process.

...this paper is intended to provide informative responses from the ETC to proposed federal legislation regarding voting system technology requirements....

Listen to us, not those un-informed computer scientists and citizen activists!

The 2006 general election demonstrated the effective utilization of electronic voting stations (many with voter-verifiable paper audit trail printers) and optical scanners.

The 2006 election went well??? Someone tell Christine Jennings.

The members of the ETC are committed to continuing to serve as partners with election officials to ensure that the mandates of HAVA are complied with in full. To achieve that goal, we wish to offer a number of observations and recommendations concerning key items that have
been proposed in various items of legislation designed to amend HAVA.

The voting machine lobby has paid good money (on cruises and dinners)to get election officials to listen to them, and wants congress to listen too.

Voters have also expressed their support of early voting and the trend today is to expand this service as well as the concept of “vote centers” whereby an individual is not locked into voting at a certain precinct but rather may vote at a more convenient location.

Vote Centers were pushed by The Election Center, another lobbying arm of the voting machine companies. Vote centers help sell DRE/touch-screens and Electronic Poll Books.

If the requirements placed on electronic voting become too onerous, many jurisdictions will simply
replace their existing electronic voting equipment with optical scan ballots.
While optical scan technology presents a perfectly acceptable form of voting, in many instances it makes early voting impractical and expensive for many jurisdictions, as the need to have all ballot styles on hand in a paper form and in sufficient quantities for all required languages required in the jurisdiction for an early voting location is not always feasible.

The vendor lobby wants congress to think we need early voting (it doesn't increase turnout) and that we need DRE/touch-screens to perform early voting. (We don't, NC, NM and Florida use optical scan for early voting). They also throw the "language" card, to divide and conquer advocacy groups.

VVPAT as the Official Ballot Record

If a single piece of paper is not readable, regardless of the reason, and the VVPAT is the
official record of the ballot, the potential is high that the voter involved will not
have his or her vote counted.

The vendor misleads. VVPB state laws address this issue. But - with paperless voting, we can be sure that thousands of ballots wont be counted. Thats why so many states have passed laws to require paper.

Manual Audits
...a required hand counted audit (even in only one race) would cause chaos with runoff
election schedules.

The vendor doesn't want you to have proof that their machines can't count votes!

Disclosure of Source Code

“What is the potential risk involved or unintended consequences?”

Individual reviewers with personal agendas or insufficient knowledge of voting
technology or the vagaries of election law in multiple jurisdictions may raise a
red flag on a voting system without warrant and with little or no time for
election officials to react prior to an election. ...

It is possible that full disclosure to any person could result in providing a
potential hacker with the ability to defraud an election.

The vendors are really scared that you will see how poorly their source code is written, or that you will find the back-doors they installed.

Paper of Durable and Archival Quality
Some previous legislative proposals called for a ban on the use of thermal paper
to produce a VVPAT.

...There are many myths surrounding the use of thermal paper. Thermal paper has vastly
improved and evolved from the early years when it was first developed. The
facts are that the thermal paper used in voting systems can easily be maintained
in a readable form for the required retention period for federal election records.

The vendor wants to keep elections hard to recount and audit, and the reel to reel printer ensures this difficulty They hope audits will be too hard we will quit using the paper at all.

Accessible Voting Equipment

...It must be noted, however, that legislative language which requires the disabled
community to verify a VVPAT record independently is currently problematic:
there are many issues of feasibility and usability that require more thought and
supporting research to identify solutions to these concerns.

They worry that this language will discourage the purchase of touch-screens,encourage the purchase of optical scanners and ballot marking devices, like Automark, or IVS (phone system that marks the ballot).

Reel-to-Reel VVPAT

Proposed language requires that “The voting system shall not preserve the voter verifiable
paper ballots in any manner that makes it possible, at any time after the ballot
has been cast, to associate a voter with the record of the voter’s vote.” Clarification
needs to be provided regarding the intent and meaning of this language. Is it
designed to eliminate the use of reel-to-reel canister paper rolls? If so, this
language would effectively eliminate the use of most existing electronic voting
systems that produce a VVPAT. Jurisdictions have successfully administered
elections using the reel-to-reel form of VVPAT by ensuring that administrative
procedures are implemented to guarantee that a voter’s ballot remains secret.

Vendor lobby wants us to keep the defective reel to reel printers because we already have them.

EFFECTIVE DATE OF STATUTORY CHANGES

Even assuming swift passage of HAVA legislation in 2007, it is too late to implement
change in time for the 2008 federal elections.

WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY
Wireless transmission capabilities exist in some electronic voting systems and
related components in the field today and have been in use successfully and
securely for many years and are particularly beneficial for large jurisdictions so
they can transmit preliminary, unofficial voting system results in an expedient
manner.

Stop, you are melting us!!!!

The full comments can be downloaded here:

http://josephhall.org/tmp/ITAA-ETC-hava_amendments.pdf