Coalition of Election and Computer Experts Ask Congress to Vote No on H.R. 811

An Election Deception Bill

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This bill should be called the 'Voter Con Act', it will not really make our elections more secure!

Austin, TX (PRWEB) June 12, 2007

American elections are about to be further compromised by a legislative "solution" to electronic voting machine fraud, according to a coalition of election and computer experts and citizens.

This highly compromising bill is about to come up for a vote in Congress is H.R. 811, "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007".

Vickie Karp, National Chair of the Coalition states, "We at the Coalition for Visible Ballots believe that H.R 811 would actually perpetuate widespread election fraud for a number of reasons, and that the Congressional co-sponsors of this 60-page document, and the public, truly do not understand its dangerous implications for our democratic elections."

According to Abbe Waldman Delozier of the Coalition for Visible Ballots, "This bill should be called the 'Voter Con Act', it will not really make our elections more secure!"

DeLozier, Karp, and the signatories below present the following partial summary of reasons why they oppose this bill:

The bill affirms the practice of adding printers to electronic voting machines that are already proven to be insecure. Computer scientists have demonstrated the ease of hacking and manipulating the voting machine software, allowing for ease of vote totals to be recorded differently inside the machine in some electronic voting machines with printers added (see: Hacking Diebold TSx touchscreens with printers added).
H.R. 811 codifies into federal law the use of secret vote counting technologies, requiring public officials and others to sign nondisclosure agreements to protect the trade secrecy of corporate interests rather than allowing open, transparent vote counting and publicly owned elections.
The bill places indefinite control of the nation's voting systems into the hands of four White House appointees, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), by appropriating more than five times its current budget from FY2007, and citing the EAC as an authority more than 32 times.
The bill's overly prescriptive language violates state sovereignty, and its contradictory and confusing requirements and timetables create a destabilizing risk of litigation and election challenges.
The bill places technology over democracy, denying citizens the right to run elections without being hampered by high tech, corporate political agendas.
The bill furthers the misguided and undemocratic direction initiated with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) by replacing observable voting (voters marking and verifying their own ballots on Election Day) with "verifiable" machine voting tabulation. "Verification" has proven in the past to occur, if at all, through recounts and audits done after elections are certified--too late to correct crucial mistakes in election results.
Recounts and audits have been rigged and manipulated as proven by the March 2007 convictions of election workers in Ohio and recent audit manipulation in Florida.

Election workers convicted for rigging the recount: http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1173861417117480.xml&coll=2

Vendor dictated audits in Fla.: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4321&print=1

See: YouTube video explaining crucial aspects of the bill can be seen at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjFHNfKWkCs

Bruce O'Dell, a computer security expert states, "My clients and I would both go to jail if we applied the same standards of security and audits to our banking systems that America has been conned into deploying in its electronic voting systems. The primary 'problem' with the common sense alternative -- a return to citizen-run elections with hand counted paper ballots -- appears to be that doing so would take public money out of the pockets of voting equipment vendors and their academic and political allies."

Jeremiah Akin, a computer programmer who has studied voting machine software used in many elections states, "Not only does the voting program I examined allow one to modify its code, it will clean up the modifications a person made. So the next time someone opens the software, all the code that was modified would be reset back into its original form. This means that election workers, the public or vendors could conceivably tamper with the election results and no one would know it. Contrary to popular belief, election audits do not go through every paper ballot to see if the totals from the machines match up to the paper."

What We Want:

Citizen-run and citizen-monitored elections, with citizens hand counting paper ballots either hand-marked or marked with non-computerized ballot marking devices. Paper ballots, not "trails."
Open public access to election ballots and records; no secret contracts nor trade secrecy with vendors in our publicly-owned elections.
Abolish the Election Assistance Commission; end executive branch control over elections.
No unfunded mandates (such as text converters or adding printers to electronic voting equipment that is proven insecure.)
To provide the disabled with a voting device that will allow them to vote without assistance, Vote-PAD http://www.vote-pad.us/ or the "Equalivote" may be used for compliance with the Help America Vote Act.

The Coalition is asking all Americans to contact their elected officials in Washington TODAY to tell them to vote NO on H.R. 811. Citizens must reclaim our rights to run our own elections instead of allowing them to be run by corporations who control the voting machines, run on secret software.

Congressional contact information is found here: http://www.congress.org.

Election and computer experts who unanimously oppose H.R. 811 becoming law include:
Abbe Waldman DeLozier, Co-Editor/Co-Author-Hacked High Tech Election Theft in America, 11 Experts Expose the Truth; Vickie Karp, co-editor, "HACKED!" and National Chair, Coalition for Visible Ballots; Kathleen Wynne of VoteRescue and HCPBnow.org; Karen Renick; Joan Brunwasser, Voting Integrity Editor, OpEd News; Rob Kall, Editor, OpEd News; Bruce O'Dell, computer security expert and member Election Defense Alliance; Dan Ashby and Sally Castleman of Election Defense Alliance; Paul Lehto - Election Law Specialist, Linda Poniktera, and Ken Karan, Psephos; Phil Lindsey of Showmethevote.org; Bob Fleischer of Massachusetts Citizens for Voting Integrity; Judy Alter of Protect California Ballots; Sharona Merel, Founder, National Ballot Integrity Project; Pokey Anderson, KPFT radio host, Houston; Andi Novick, Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media; Nancy S. Dwyer of Lassen Progressives; Paddy Shaffer; Tom O'Brien, Producer, "Commander-in-Thief"; Michael Green, Election Integrity monitor; Dennis Morrisseau, Lt. Morrisseau's Rebellion; Mark A. Adams, Election Attorney, Florida; Cathy Miller & Shar & Jim Hamilton - Secure*Accurate*Elections; Jenny Clark; Jeremiah Akin, Suzanne Erb, Patricia Axelrod, David Frenkel, Host and Producer, Independent Voices; Kevin Gallagher, Producer/Host, Time Out Productions. Tom Courbat-Executive Director-Save R Vote

For more information and another YouTube video on this topic, go to http://www.coalitionforvisibleballots.org and http://www.hackedelections.com

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