Ding dong, the Holt Bill's dead. The Holt Bill (HR 811), a bill originally designed to restore transparency and accountability to elections, underwent a makeover in committee and emerged as a Frankenstein's monster of voting reform. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) was the first to withdraw his support of the amended bill several weeks ago. Other democrats are now joining him in opposition to the bill in its current form.
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) describes serious concerns about HR 811 on this post from Brad Blog.
Paul Lehto reports on DU that the Holt Bill has been declared dead. Even Rush Holt himself is considering withdrawal of his support for the bill because of its pro-DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) industry revisions.
This is a bitter victory. Election integrity activists have fought the new version of HR 811, not because they oppose legislative reform, but because the re-worked bill eliminated the public access to touchscreen DRE software. Instead of open and universal access to the voting computer's source code, which was found in the original version of HR 811, the re-worked version requires that only certain "expert" individuals be allowed to examine the source code. Those experts must sign a confidentiality agreement not to disclose the source code and they may examine only the escrowed source code, not the actual source code in the machines. Merry Christmas, Diebold!
Believe it or not, the Senate version of voting machine reform is even worse, in the form of S 1487.
This is a bill which is not only friendly to the computerized voting industry, but which also allows a certain type of election fraud, perpetrated on minority communities, to be ignored. The appearance of significant under-voting is an alarm for election fraud, which should always be investigated. According to S 1487, in certain (read African-American) communities, under-voting is to be dismissed as typical and unremarkable and will not merit investigation. This is a recipe for institutionalized election fraud and is an affront to the spirit of the 15th amendment. S 1487 must be defeated as well.
Let's make it simple. No voting without paper ballots. Not paper receipts, paper ballots.
Let's make it even simpler. Only hand counted paper ballots- well-designed paper ballots- for all elections in 2008. I'll take my chances with hanging chads over black boxes any day.
Ban DRE's!