From Sarah:
After three hours of testimony yesterday, the Rules Committee recessed without taking any action.

The bill must go through the Rules Committee before it gets to the floor. It's now looking like it might be early next week before there will be a House vote -- so keep up those calls to your members of Congress!

Many thanks to the thousands of you who have already called.

That was the word from Sarah Dufendach, our chief lobbyist, when the staff got together yesterday to talk about the Holt voting machine bill.

This bill - which Common Cause has been fighting to get passed for at least the past two years - looks like it's coming to the floor on Thursday. That's the good news. The bad news is that there's a chance for the Holt bill opponents to throw a major wrench in the works by adding so-called "poison pill" amendments.

We'll keep you posted - here on the blog, and in your email (you are on CauseNet, right?). In the meantime, the most important thing you can do is call your member of Congress and ask him or her to support the Holt bill (HR 811) and oppose any poison pill amendments.

Then tell us about your call.

This is the moment. We can't afford to have another election with suspect voting machine technology. It's too important. Protect your vote. Make the call.

The headline of a front-page story in today's New York Times - entitled "Overhaul Plan for Vote System Will Be Delayed" - is somewhat misleading.

Negotiations are still under way to pass a bill by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (HR 811), which would require electronic voting machines to produce a voter-verifiable paper record of their vote. Holt and House Speaker Pelosi are doing their best to bring the bill to the floor for a House vote, despite mounting resistance from state and local election officials who complain the implementation timelines in the bill are too short.

We will continue to support Holt and Pelosi in those efforts, and are encouraged that talk is still happening. We will keep working tirelessly toward a resolution and are hopeful it will take place.

It is also essential that Congress recognize that we cannot go through one more national election in which the mechanics of our democracy - our voting systems - are not as secure as they can be, and that voters are not confident that their ballots will be counted as cast.

How do we try and bring democracy to Iraq when we cannot even get our own voting systems working securely?

We can't.

In the last three elections we have seen repeatedly paperless electronic voting machines malfunction and lose votes. American voters have called loudly for secure reliable elections, and that is what we will continue to fight for.

Stay tuned - we are far from finished.

Kudos and thank yous go to Governor Richardson, both for what he has done for voters in the state of New Mexico, and today for an oped he wrote which appeared in The Hill in support of the paper ballot bill, The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007.  

In the November 2004 election, many New Mexico voters were forced to vote on paperless DREs.  True to form, these machines lost votes and added votes, and generally destroyed voter confidence in the elections process.  To address the situation, the Governor proposed a plan to move the State of New Mexico to a paper ballot system.  Of course, he encountered resistance, very similar to the resistance that Members of Congress are facing today for making our voting systems reliable and secure:  "Change is bad."  It is costly.  It can't be done.  It can't be done quickly.

But with the Governor's leadership, New Mexico converted to a paper ballot system in less than a year.  This past election, the number of machine-related voting problems dropped dramatically in New Mexico.  Now we just need that kind of leadership on voting machines in Congress.  Swift.  Bold.  Decisive.

We at Common Cause think there is a good chance of passing H.R. 811 (The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007, introduced by Rep. Holt) and getting it signed into law. This is no small thing.

Do we need technology that makes it possible for language minority voters to cast a ballot in their own language? Yes. Do we need technology that makes it possible for disabled voters to vote independently? Yes. But those voters need to know, too, that their votes will be counted in an audit or recount. They deserve the same protection as all other voters.

While we don't champion DREs, we're not convinced of the accuracy or security of optical scanners, either. Rather than focus on specific technology, Common Cause finds it more useful to zero in on the principles that should drive the choice of technology, such as the use of paper ballots that voters produce or can easily verify, the ability to conduct mandatory random audits using different counting methods such as tabulator and hand-count, the ability to conduct meaningful recounts in close races, and accessibility for use by people with different needs.

If we focus on those principles, then it's clear that H.R. 811 is a step in the right direction.

If you're a student of the history of elections as I am, you know that our nation's election system has been fraught with problems for its entire history (and even before--George Washington bought votes for his House of Burgesses race with casks of rum). Today, our election system is a huge complicated operation with millions of moving parts--think of all those town clerks and volunteer poll workers.

H.R. 811 will significantly improve the security of that system.