H.R. 811, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007, would require all voting systems to have a voter-verified paper trail, which would allow us to trust touchscreen voting machines. This would ensure that recounts are possible. Current machines from Diebold and some other vendors have no paper trail, and recounts are not possible. (There have been some claimed “recounts”, which really just amounted to reading the memory card from the machine a second time. If it was wrong the first time, it will still be wrong the second time.)
It is vital that we have confidence in the integrity of elections, and this bill would improve that considerably over the current state. The bill would also require hand recounts of the paper ballots in at least 3% of precincts chosen randomly.
Please let your representatives know that you want them to support H.R. 811.
[via Freedom to Tinker]
You are aware, are you not, that Ed Felten was being sarcastic when he said “Protect E-Voting — Support H.R. 811″?…
I’m usually able to spot sarcasm, but Ed’s post on H.R. 811 didn’t seem the least bit sarcastic to me. He presents a credible opinion that H.R. 811 isn’t perfect but is fairly good.