Defenders Of Democracy

Complete Report

While H.R. 811 may not yet be the ideal bill the voting integrity community and the citizenry have been waiting for, (and ideal may be more than we can hope for now), nonetheless, the Georgia Election Officials Association (GEOA) has been working overtime to kill H.R. 811.  

The GEOA's annual conference kicked off on Sunday May 20, with a reception sponsored by Diebold, where our elections officials  drank libations with Diebold picking up the tab.  The first working session of the conference on Monday May 21st was focused on killing H.R. 811, clearly a priority of Diebold as indicated by their letter below.  Gary J. Smith, the GEOA's Secretary & Treasurer, as well as Forsyth County's Director of Elections, had a key role putting together the GEOA's Legislative Committee Report.  The report is actually more of a campaign manual, full of examples of political strategies implemented in Georgia counties to stop H.R. 811.  County Election Directors statewide clearly have been actively lobbying to stop election accountability regardless of public opinion and the failure of Georgia's voting system to be accountable and auditable. 

Rep. Zoe Lofgren amended Rush Holt's original bill and the House Administration  Committee passed Lofgren's amended bill (click here for bill text).  The bill may be voted on by the full House of Representatives soon.

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation's Matt Zimmerman authored "HR 811: Separating Truth From Fiction in E-voting Reform", a point by point analysis of many of the claims being spread by well-meaning individuals opposed to the bill for unfounded reasons. 

The Association for Computing Machinery U.S. Public Policy Committee posted this commentary supportive of the amended bill's passage in the House Administration Committee. 

VoteTrustUSA posted this statement in support of the amended bill.  

David S. Broder at the Washington Post aided The Election Center, a voting machine industry front group in spreading fear about the bill's impact, with this article.  We can  be sure that more propaganda pieces from the industry will follow, as the Holt Bill will impact the industry's ability to control election outcomes.

Longtime voting integrity activist and programmer Teresa Hommel, who programmed the educational tool entitled "Fraudulent Voting Machine", offers the following critique of H.R. 811. 

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The Georgia State Election Board on March 13, 2007 voted unanimously (with one abstention) to refer a complaint filed on December 13, 2006 by Georgians for Verified Voting (GAVV) to the state Attorney General for investigation. GAVV is a nonprofit, nonpartisan citizens' action group that advocates for voting systems and processes in Georgia that are transparent, verifiable and secure.
 
The complaint raises questions about the electronic voting system used in the 2006 primary and general elections: whether key rules and procedures related to system certification were followed by the former Secretary of State Cathy Cox, Election Director Kathy Rogers, Britain Williams, consultant to the state's voting system certifying agent, Kennesaw Center for Elections, and Diebold Election Systems.

Georgia's former Director of Elections, Kathy Rogers,  packs public hearing panels  with Diebold-friendly  panelists and  wastes the Georgia State Election Board's time listening to  anti-accountability propaganda that differs greatly from public opinions and computer science facts .  Kathy Rogers wasted no time after her resignation from the Secretary of State's office to reportedly accept a position with Diebold.  

All three public hearings were videotaped and the video from the first public hearing is now viewable on the web by clicking here. 

On November 7, the State of Georgia implemented its paper ballot pilot in 3 precincts, giving about 2,000 citizens the opportunity to vote on Diebold’s AccuVote TSX, a paper ballot version of Georgia’s electronic voting machines.  97% of computer experts agree that electronic voting without a paper ballot is, at best, risky and makes your vote subject to machine failure and fraud, as proven by Princeton University’s Professor Felton.  

BUT WHY ARE WE TESTING THESE VOTING MACHINES?

Unfortunately, the Diebold AccuVote TSX has already been tested by Black Box Voting in February this year, and it failed that test.  The AccuVote TSX is designed to roll up the ballots sequentially, which is the subject of a lawsuit, as this compromises ballot secrecy.  The roll-up design prevents standardized counting of individual ballots into stacks when performing recounts and audits.  The unwieldy roll-up design also has a reputation for causing needless delays & endless headaches when counting individual ballots for recounts and audits, slowing recounts to a crawl.  And the reports from Ohio noted 10% discrepancies between paper ballots audited and the totals listed in these voting machines' memories!

THIS VOTING MACHINE DESIGN COSTS MORE, IS PROBLEMATIC, AND DELIVERS LESS...

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   Princeton University computer security researchers have proved that the voting machines used in Georgia and Maryland are riggable by developing a demonstration computer program to rig election results on the Diebold Accuvote TS machines used in both states.  The program always produced results as programmed by in advance by the researchers, without leaving a trace of evidence of the voters intentions.  Furthermore, the Princeton researchers encapsulated the rigging program within a computer virus so that it could be spread from one voting machine to another to potentially infect all of a region's voting machines.  On September 28th, the U.S. Committee on House Administration held a hearing on electronic voting machine security and paper trails.  The hearing included a demonstration from Edward W. Felton, Professor of computer science at Princeton, who demonstrated this vote-rigging program before the committee.  Despite the fact that his demonstration proved true the worst nightmares of computer experts, who had been stating this possibility since the implementation of paperless voting, the demonstration failed to generate any action from any House Committee members.