[Voterescue] HR 811 ALERT!!! Tell your Rep to vote NO!!!

[Karen Renick]

Dear VoteRescuers & 
ALL our coalition partners in Texans for REAL Elections:

By 4 p.m. TOMORROW, Tuesday, September 18, 2007, all Representatives in Congress must let the House leadership know how they intend to vote on the Holt Bill - HR 811 - which has been aptly renamed by those of us opposing it as simply "Microsoft 811".  

This terribly convoluted, 60+ page bill is being sold as the ONLY possible solution to the "fatally flawed" voting machines that are used by over 80% of American voters. Those pushing for the  passage of HR 811 insist that "It's this bill or nothing!" in order to scare people into supporting it despite its many flaws. 

The following is a list of the bill's most "inspired" requirements:
(For explanations of the following points, see the end of this message*.)

1. HR  811 endorses and enshrines in law secret vote-counting. 

2. HR 811 allows the continued use of DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting machines. 
 
 3. HR 811 requires that all DREs produce a "voter-verified paper ballot" which is impossible to do.

 4. HR 811 calls for audits of the "voter-verified paper ballots" that many experts say will not be effective and, in fact, will most likely be rigged..  
 
 5. HR 811 would make the highly partisan and secretive Election Assistance Commission (EAC) a permanent agency. 

 HR 811 is NOT our only chance to take back our elections from the corporations that now run them with their secretly programmed voting machines.

We should and must demand a better solution...A  simpler solution...A solution that is welcoming of all citizens.

We must demand a new bill that bans all electronic voting-counting machines, including both DREs and ballot scanners.

Call your Representative in Congress TODAY to strongly urge him/her to vote "NO" on HR 811, "Microsoft 811".  

Also, demand that he/she throws their support behind a new bill that will legislate the use of paper ballots that are hand counted in full public view with all necessary security measures.  All results will be posted in public view at the precinct level before moving the ballots and results up the election tabulation ladder. It's that simple.

Go to www.congress.org  to find your Representative and call ASAP!

If you have any questions, call Karen at 496-7408 or Vickie at 775-3737.



*The following elaborates on each of the most "inspired" requirements of HR 811 that are listed above:

1. HR  811 endorses and enshrines in law secret vote-counting. Lobbyists for the software corporations, led by Microsoft, succeeded in rewriting the "disclosure" section of HR 811 this past spring so that the public will not be granted the right to inspect the source code and other programs in the machines as previously written. Obviously, the rights of corporations are deemed more important than the rights of the voters for total transparency.

2. HR 811 allows the continued use of DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting machines. DREs include both the touchscreen type and the wheel selector type which is currently used in Travis, Tarrant, and Harris Counties, among others. Nationally, a number of states have now banned the use of DRE machines altogether because of the mounting evidence that they can be easily hacked, rigged and manipulated so that election outcomes on these machines are readily suspect. Writing that "electronic voting has been an abysmal failure", The New York Times called for a total ban of DRE machines in an editorial about HR 811 published on Sept. 6, 2007.
 
 3. HR 811 requires that all DREs produce a "voter-verified paper ballot" which is totally impossible to make happen because the only ballot that a DRE can produce is an electronic one comprised of countless electromagnetic impulses that are invisible to the voter and is, therefore, impossible to verify. Instead, the only tangible object a voter can "verify" is a "paper record" (also called a "paper trail") that is produced by adding a printing device to each DRE. (Translation: Now even more of the citizens' money will flow into the pockets of the machine vendors.) And, it follows that, even though the voter's selections can be correctly reflected on the "paper record", there is no way to know if these same selections were cast on the electronic ballot inside the machine, therefore, these "paper records" create a false reassurance to the voter
 
 4. HR 811 calls for audits of the "voter-verified paper ballots" that many experts say will not be effective and, in fact, will most likely be rigged.. Since HR 811 requires that only 3% of the precincts are to be scrutinized for foul play, it is more appropriate to call these "spot checks" rather than audits because the term "audit" means a total review of all the records. And, even if a true audit were called for in the bill, it would be impossible to accomplish because studies have found that 10% of the "voter-verified paper records" are rendered unreadable due to paper jams and printing failures.  For the sake of proving the further fallibility of these "spot checks", let's suspend reality and say that 100% of the "paper records" were available in every precinct. Now what easily comes into play is the likelihood of insiders secretly rigging the counts of the "paper records" so they match the machine counts when the time finally comes to publicly preform the "spot
 checks". This is exactly what occurred in the largest county in Ohio after the 2004 presidential election. And, gee, it only took three years to finally bring into court and convict the election officials who had performed the rigging, which meant that the "official" results were never questioned. For these reasons, relying on audits (i.e., spot checks) to catch any manipulation of the DRE machines and then for these discoveries to have any effect on the already announced "official" results on Election Night, is a totally useless strategy for securing our elections. 
 
 5. HR 811 would make the highly partisan and secretive Election Assistance Commission (EAC) a permanent agency and give it increased influence and power over all the states, thereby centralizing what was always intended to be a very diverse and decentralized system of conducting elections. Also worrisome is the fact that the four members of the Executive Committee of the EAC are Presidential appointees. Over the past few years, since it was first created and funded by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the EAC has been incompetent, behind schedule by years and derelict in its duties. They have also shown to be unduly influenced by the interests of the voting system corporations.
   

Karen Renick
  Director, VoteRescue
  www.VoteRescue.org
  karen at voterescue.org
   
  "Let the ballot boxes speak, so that the souls can be quiet."   
         ~sign on a fence near the Federal Electoral Tribunal in Mexico City
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