Earlier this month, US Congressman Rush Holt (D, NJ) introduced H.R. 811, a bill to amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require a voter-verified paper ballot. I have read the bill, as well as some of the criticism by various activists.

In my opinion, passage of the Holt bill would be the single most positive development in this country this decade to ensure the security, integrity and verifiability of elections. As a federal law, this legislation would establish a baseline for all states that would exceed the security and audit of elections in most states today. The bill is well thought out. It addresses the issues of audit, security, privacy, recounts, conflicts of interest, testing, certification, and cost.

I was personally privy to discussions on these issues as the text for the bill was being drafted, and I believe that the reason that this bill handles all of these difficult issues so well is that the Holt staffers took their time, acted deliberately, and consulted with the top experts, until they got it right.

The primary criticism from a subset of the activists is that the bill does not go far enough. For example, it does not ban DREs, as long as they are equipped with a voter verified paper record that is not kept in sequential order. Personally, I would support a ban on all DREs, with paper trails or without. However, the lack of such a ban does not detract from the fact that the Holt bill as it reads would do more to improve election integrity, security and audit than anything that anybody else is doing.

Similarly, when I read the NIST report about software independence (SI), and the resulting recommendation that legacy systems be allowed, and that only future systems will require SI, I would have preferred that all non-SI systems be immediately decertified. But, the net result of that report was positive and will ultimately lead to better elections in this country.

As we move forward, it is important to constantly improve our elections. I believe that the Holt bill has the potential to take the biggest step this country can take towards the ultimate goal of minimizing fraud and error, while increasing access, confidence, and thus, hopefully, participation in public elections in the United States.

I wanted folks to know that we've been reading your posts and are very grateful that you all are monitoring this process so closely and blowing the whistle when you see fit.   We read them all.  They've been great.  We are working actively with Members of Congress and their staff to have the best possible federal legislation.  They are tired of us bugging them with all kinds of language change suggestions - many of them yours - but that's our job and we'll continue to do it.  And we're working with other advocacy groups to help us push for these changes as well.  We won't get everything we ask for but we will get some of it.

That said, we very much support HR 811.  Look. Reality check here.   There are still 15 states out there with paperless DREs.  No paper. No Nothing.  That's 15  too many.  It only takes one of those states to throw a presidential election.  We NEED these machines to produce paper ballots.  Only 12 states conduct any kind of audit.  With the exception of Connecticut,  all of these states have audits which are weaker than the requirements in the Holt bill.    We NEED audits in all 50 states.   We also NEED emergency ballots in every polling location so that when (not if) machines break voters can still vote.   We NEED durable paper ballots so that they can be used in recounts and audits.  

So we need this bill.  But it has a very long list of enemies. From  voting system  vendors -- to Secretaries of State who don't ever want the feds to tell them what to do or how to do it --  to underfunded overburdened county officials who want to know just "where we think they're going to get the staff and money to implement all these changes."    And what these folks say really resonates on Capitol hill.  In other words, this bill is not a done deal.  We NEED Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer to champion this bill and move it quickly.  And we will NEED all your help in pushing for this bill and for the funding for this bill. 

So that's where we are.  Please keep your comments coming.

After the propeller plane piloted by New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle crashed into a Manhattan apartment tower last week, killing both Lidle and his flight instructor, Tyler Stanger, fresh alarms went out about the security vulnerabilities associated with small aircraft flying out of regional airports. The celebrity component of the story soon overshadowed security worries.

But there's another reason that security-conscious lawmakers didn't rally to review the protocols of flight plans for hobbyist aviators such as Lidle: the lobbying clout of the 408,000-member Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. The AOPA's political action committee doled out $544,504 to candidates for Congress in 2004. By Labor Day this year it had already surpassed that total with $645,600 in donations.