Essential Estrogen

What follows is a press release from my very good friends at Iowans for Voting Integrity. It's important so perk your eyeballs and read attentively!

CITIZENS' GROUP PRAISES IOWA PAPER TRAIL VOTING BILL
Next Step is National Legislation To Protect the 2008 Elections

A citizens' advocacy group praised legislation signed by Governor Culver on Friday. Senate File 369 clears the way for an end to paperless electronic voting in Iowa by November 2008, and would eventually make voter-marked paper ballots the universal standard in Iowa elections. Iowa is the 30th state to enact a law require a voter-verified paper record of each vote cast. Earlier this month, the governors of Florida and Maryland signed legislation to require voter-marked paper ballots throughout their states. Other states have implemented paper trails without passing legislation.

Thirteen states, including Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Texas, are likely to use paperless electronic voting extensively in the 2008 Presidential election unless federal or state legislation intervenes. Almost 30% the nation's voters cast their ballots on paperless electronic voting machines in the 2004 Presidential election.

“Iowa's new law is good news for Iowa, but in national elections, we don't just depend on our state's voting systems,” said Iowans for Voting Integrity co-chair Sean Flaherty.

Paperless electronic voting has come under intense criticism by computer scientists and voter advocacy groups in recent years. Last year a task force of computer scientists that included Microsoft's former chief of security and experts from institutions such as Stanford, MIT, the University of Iowa, and government laboratories, concluded that all electronic voting systems “have security and reliability vulnerabilities that pose a real danger to the integrity of local, state, and national elections.”

The task force called strongly for voter-verified paper records and routine hand audits to verify electronic vote tallies.

Federal paper trail legislation is moving forward. HR 811, a bill to require a paper trail and routine hand-count audits in federal elections by 2008, now has 216 cosponsors in the House of Representatives and is expected to get a vote in the next couple of weeks. Iowa Representatives Leonard Boswell, Bruce Braley, and Dave Loebsack are cosponsors.

“If Iowans want a verifiable Presidential election in 2008, they should call their Congressman, even if he is already a cosponsor, and tell him to pass HR 811, “ Flaherty said. “Do we really want to have another Presidential election that can't be independently verified?”

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1 - Source: http://www.verifiedvoting,org. Site notes the states that have passed laws, or required paper trails, and notes the addition of Maryland and Florida to roster of paper-trail states.

2 - Source: “Building Confidence in U.S. Elections.” The Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, pp. 25-26. http://www.american.edu/ia/cfer/report/full_report.pdf

3 - Source: “The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World.” The Brennan Center Task Force on Voting System Security, page 3. http://brennancenter.org/presscenter/releases_2006/pressrelease_2006_0627.html