Here's an update from Susannah Goodman, who spent the afternoon in the committee room:

Hooray!  I just came back from the House Longworth building where the House Administration Committee passed an amended version of HR 811, The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007 out of the Committee by vote of 6 to 3.

A HUGE THANK YOU to all of you who have supported this effort with your calls, letters, articles, editorials, thoughts and words and financial support.  THIS IS YOUR VICTORY.  There is no way we could have gotten this far without you!

Although we still have a long way to go - the bill still needs to pass the House Floor and then needs to go through the whole process in the Senate - this is a great start.  This is a great day for verifiable elections.

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I wanted to give folks an update on our voting machine integrity campaign. Because of the work of so many activists on this issue, we are seeing a much better situation in this election cycle. We still have a long way to go and work to do, but many more voters in 2006 will be able to verify that their vote was recorded correctly.

According to VerifiedVoting.org and the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, in 2004 only 10 states had passed requirements that voting systems produce voter verifiable paper records - covering only 27% of registered voters. Today, 27 states have passed requirements that their voting systems produce voter verifiable paper records, covering almost 55% of registered voters. In addition, eight states and a number of counties have simply done the right thing and purchased voting systems which automatically produce paper records, bringing the total to over 65%.

Together we can reach our goal to have all voting machines produce paper records and have every state mandate an audit of those records.