Baby steps. Who knows if and when this thing will get to the floor, but you have to celebrate even small victories. The bill that was just passed out of the House Administration Committee would allow states that choose to upgrade their voting machines to ones that have a paper trail to use money made available under the Help America Vote Act, which was passed in the wake of the 2000 Florida debacle. As we all know, there are some pretty sketchy voting machines out there, and some states are having buyers remorse after rushing to replace their antiquated lever systems.

Last Sunday's Dispatch article titled "Ousted," suggects Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has been heavy handed in her removal or rejection for reappointment of some election officials.  Among the  published list is the former Chair of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and Chair of the Ohio Republican Party, Robert Bennett, notorious for his role in the Ohio election of 2004, where voter suppression and voting anomalies were evidence of a strong partisan interference to sway the vote.  Keith Cunningham, former Republican member of the Board of Machine Examiners, was another infamous character out of the drama of 2004, who attempted to interfere with the Green Party Recount by not using a random system.

The article claims the former "fair-minded" judge (Brunner) has been accused by a prominent Republican legislator as "injecting a culture of fear and intimidation" into the county BOE's.  It would seem that it is the Dispatch which is injecting fear by their relentless criticisms of Brunner who is just trying to fix the broken system she inherited, including inherently flawed voting machines.

Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ), who's worked for several years to get a bill passed in Congress ensuring that voters can verify their votes on paper, and that those paper ballots are counted in mandatory audits and recounts. Today, HR 811, The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007, is getting close to passage.

A number of advocates who you think would cheer this development have turned instead to attacking it. Some of them are simply opposed to the federal government mandating how state elections should be run. Others are disappointed that the bill doesn't immediately outlaw DREs for the 2008 election. (What it does do is mandate that by November, 2008, every voter will have the chance to verify his or her vote on a paper ballot, and it ensures that every state will use that paper ballot in mandatory random audits. Without passage of HR 811, some 35 million voters will have to vote on paperless machines, and very few states will conduct audits.)

A study just released by VotersUnite looking at voting statistics in 2004 and 2006 in minority precincts in New Mexico finds that when voters used optically scanned ballots, it resulted in many fewer undervotes compared to when voters used DREs.

To quote from the press release:


This study effectively challenges the assumption that touchscreen electronic voting machines are somehow easier and more accurate for minority voters to use.

The data used in the study can be found here.

"America Goes to the Polls," a new report by the Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network, gives us a comprehensive picture of voter turnout in 2006, and compares it to other midterm elections over the past 30 years. We also get to see how the states rank in turnout. The report also contains recommendations for reform.

And how do Americans fare when they go to the polls? We get an excellent and very thorough sense of how disabled voters fare in the newly released report by computer expert Noel Runyan, "Improving Access in Voting: A Report on the Technology for Accessible Voting Systems," published by VoterAction and Demos. This report puts to rest the idea that DREs best accommodate the needs of disabled voters.

In a briefing yesterday, Lowell Finley (from VoterAction), one of the lead attorneys for the nonpartisan voters' case against Sarasota election officials and ES&S, spoke about two hearings that were held this week. A "motion to compel" had been filed to force ES&S and the state to turn over the source code of the I-Votronic machines, as well as to allow the actual machines to be examined.

Finley and the other attorneys for the plaintiffs (including Matt Zimmerman of EFF) seem to feel that the hearings went well. ES&S was not willing to put any of their employees on the stand -- not wishing to open them up to cross-examination -- and only had one expert witness, who in the course of his testimony seemed to contradict himself and perhaps even implicate ES&S's co-defendants (the county election officials) as the cause of the undervotes.

The plaintiffs felt that the judge was quite engaged in the hearings; he paid close attention, took notes, asked sharp questions, and didn't put up with grandstanding or badgering by the defense attorneys. The judge let the hearings go long in order to hear all the testimony and has asked for written closing statements by Friday at noon. We can all hope that he rules on the motion very soon afterward.