TO: CVF-NEWS FROM: Kim Alexander DATE: June 20, 2003 RE: CVF News Roundup: voting paper trail, CA HAVA plan & more
Hi Folks:
In this CVF-NEWS Round-up::
* New York Assembly passes bill to require a voter verified paper trail
* HR 2239 update - federal paper trail bill attracts nine co-sponsors
* CA Secretary of State publishes draft HAVA plan
* Voting tech in the news: Electionline, San Bernardino, UC Riverside
* League of Women Voters US says paper trail unnecessary
* Reminder: June 24th New York voting forum
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* New York Assembly passes bill to require a voter verified paper trail
On June 17, the New York State Assembly passed A-8847, "The Voting Systems Standards Act of 2003." This bill, which passed on a near-unanimous, bipartisan vote, authorizes procurement of new electronic voting machines and specifically requires that the new machines "produce and retain a voter verified permanent paper record with a manual audit capacity which shall record each vote to be cast and which shall be presented to the voter from behind a window or other device before the ballot is cast." The bill now moves to the New York Senate. The full text of the bill is online at http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A08847&sh=t. The bill memo and status are at http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A08847.
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* HR 2239 update - federal paper trail bill attracts nine co-sponsors
Nine members of Congress so far have signed on as co-authors of HR 2239, the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003", including two Californians -- Barbara Lee of Oakland and Lynn Woolsey of Santa Rosa. HR 2239 was introduced last month by Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ). If enacted, it would require all voting machines to produce a paper record by 2004 that voters can view to check the accuracy of their votes and that election officials can use to verify votes in the event of a computer malfunction, hacking, or other irregularity. The bill would also require recounts to be automatically conducted for .5 percent of a jurisdiction's ballots selected at random. Here is the current list of co-sponsors:Brian Baird (D-WA)
John Conyers (D-MI)
Barney Frank (D-NY)
Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)
Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
Barbara Lee (D- CA)
Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)
Robert Wexler (D-FLA)
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)All these cosponsors but one, Barney Frank, are currently listed in the official bill information on the Thomas web site. For more information about HR 2239, visit http://thomas.loc.gov and search by the bill number.
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* CA Secretary of State publishes draft HAVA plan
California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley this week released his draft plan to implement the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in California. It's available online at http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/hava-state-plan.htm. The part many people are most eager to read is the proposed budget for spending federal HAVA dollars in California -- the draft budget is online at http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/hava-state-plan_sect_6_chart.htm. The total price tag for all the HAVA mandates and activities will range from $36.5 million to $352.5 million according to the draft budget. Most surprising is the estimate provided for developing a statewide voter registration database, as mandated by HAVA. The price tag for that project is between $8 million and $151 million. It's quite a range, and if the cost is near the high end the database mandate alone could take up half of the state's HAVA funds.
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* Voting tech in the news: Electionline, San Bernardino, UC Riverside
Today's Electionline features an article updating readers on California paper trail issues. That story is online at http://www.electionline.org/article.jsp?id=electionline_Weekly_- June__19__2003.San Bernardino county, CA has also been in the news the past week; it is one of the nine punch card counties required to use a different voting system by March 2004. The county has been going through a procurement process to buy new electronic voting machines, estimated to cost $10 million. The county selected Sequoia as its vendor, but two other competing vendors, Diebold and Hart/Maximus filed protests about the fairness of the scoring process the county used to select its vendor. One specific charge made by Hart/Maximus was that Diebold got an artificially good score for cost because it did not include a specific cost for a hard-copy backup to the electronic system. A hearing will be held on the protests. The county had hoped to have new machines in place for November 2003 local elections but now may instead wait until March 2004 to deploy a new system. For more information, see
http://www.sbsun.com/Stories/0,1413,208~12588~1459256,00.html.Another interesting voting tech story appeared in the Los Angeles Times today. A UC Riverside student has been charged with hacking the student government's online election results by "casting" 800 write-in ballots for "American Ninja". According to the Times' article, the student hacked the election to prove how easily it can be done; if convicted he could face up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The Times story is online at http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-me-ninja20jun20,1,1600384.story.
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* League of Women Voters US says paper trail unnecessaryThe League of Women Voters US recently published a paper on computerized voting, taking the position that a voter-verified paper audit trail to back up digital ballots is not necessary. Here's the concluding paragraph of the statement, online at http://www.lwv.org/where/promoting/votingrights_hava_drevm.html.
" In Summary the LWVUS does support an individual audit capacity for the purposes of recounts and authentication of elections for all voting systems, including, but not limited to, DREs. The LWVUS does not believe that an individual paper confirmation for each ballot is required to achieve those goals. An individual paper confirmation for each ballot would undermine disability access requirements, raise costs, and slow down the purchase or lease of machines that might be needed to replace machines that don't work. The experts that we have consulted say that there are many safeguards other than an individual ballot paper confirmation that can protect the sanctity of the ballot and that other issues are far more important in safeguarding our election systems."
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* Reminder: June 24th New York voting forum
I look forward to seeing many of you next week in New York at the voting technology forum taking place on Tuesday, June 24th at the NYC Bar Association, 42 W. 44th St. This event is free, open to the public and will be held from 10 a.m. - noon. For more details see http://www.calvoter.org/cvfnews/cvfnews061203.html#forum.That's all the news for now. Have a great weekend!
-- Kim Alexander, California Voter Foundation
kimalex@calvoter.org, http://www.calvoter.org
(916) 441-2494
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This page was first published on June 20, 2003 | Last updated on June 20, 2003
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