We're one step closer to solving the problem of paperless electronic voting machines.  HR 811, the bill intro'ed by Rep. Rush Holt, was passed in committee last week and now is moving to the House floor. 

We know Republicans will try to stop it by adding an onerous voter ID requirement, undermining support for the bill.  They claim the ID is needed to prevent fraud -- but even with Karl Rove cracking the whip, the Gonzales Justice Dept. couldn't find any evidence of a voter fraud problem.  Indeed, they fired prosecutors for failing to find such evidence - even though the evidence doesn't exist.  Down the rabbit hole.....

Tell the House to pass the Holt bill.  Take action.

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.

Common Cause Calls for Investigation into 18,000 Lost Votes

Sarasota County Election Should Not Be Certified

Common Cause is calling for an independent investigation into the alarmingly high number of missing votes in the District 13 Congressional race in Sarasota County. More than 18,000 voters, nearly 13% of those who showed up at the polls, cast votes in other races but not the closely contested Congressional race between Democrat Christine Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan. It represents a massive undercount compared to other counties, including Manatee, which reported an undercount of 2%.

"Sarasota County voters deserve an explanation," said Ben Wilcox, Executive Director of Common Cause's Florida office. "The machines should be impounded, audited and tested to determine if voters were unable to cast a ballot and why. A 13% undercount is unacceptable and this election should not be certified. Election officials should conduct a revote in this county."

An undervote rate of this magnitude is statistically improbable. In 2004, according to a report released this summer by the Brennan Center for Justice, the residual vote rate for these machines in "top of the ticket races" i.e., President was 0.7%. And the residual vote rate for "bottom of the ticket races" i.e. ballot initiatives was only 6.7%. This is twice as high. And it's a top ticket race. "Something clearly went wrong," said Wilcox. "To certify this election would make a mockery of democracy."

Several ironies here: this is Katherine Harris's old seat. AND, the citizens in this county placed a referendum question on the ballot, asking voters to mandate a voter-verified paper record (which county elections supervisor Kathy Dent strongly opposes). The question passed by a large majority.

Common Cause is a member of the MyVote1 Consortium, a broad array of nonpartisan policy and grassroots organizations, each committed to assisting voters and improving our electoral system. Common Cause collected and analyzed data on election irregularities from voters in this election, including complaint messages from calls to the MyVote1 phone line. There were many reports from concerned voters in Sarasota County, who said that Christine Jennings' name did not show up on the ballot summary after people had voted for her.

Articles in the Herald Tribune and also here, and the Miami Herald.

TO HELP US WITH OUR VOTING REFORM CAMPAIGN - GO TO GETITSTRAIGHTBY2008.ORG

A little humor before we sit down and get really bummed out by HBO's Hacking Democracy.

Tell us what you thought about the documentary.

(Thanks to Rich Garella for the photo.)

A new report, released by the University of Connecticut's VoTeR Center and Department of Computer Science and Engineering, assesses the security of the Diebold optical scan voting terminals. We commend Connecticut for having requested the report. Wish the results could have been more encouraging. At this point, it's not surprising to hear that yet another type of voting machinery is not secure.

In fact, after reading Avi Rubin's blog post on the UConn report, I'm beginning to think that even someone with my rudimentary understanding of the technical aspects of computer security could hack an election. Now that's a scary thought for Halloween!

In a related story, Common Cause Tennessee and allies have been fighting to prevent vote-tampering in Shelby County (Tennessee's most populous county), which possibly occurred in Shelby County during the primary. Evidence from computer logs and other records suggest that software was inappropriately introduced into the central vote tabulator, and that vote manipulation occurred For more on this case, visit the VoteSafeTN.org website.

We've also heard rumors of a San Diego, California, server being found to have been linked to a Diebold office in Everett, Washington, during the Busby-Bilbray election there. Check with John Gideon at VotersUnite.org to follow the story.