H. R. 2239 22 May 2003, the bill demanding a paper trail for each vote was introduced by NJ Congressman Rush Holt. The Republican leadership, far from fast-tracking this bill, or allowing it to take its natural course, apparently did not - and has not - allowed it to leave committee. Does anyone have an answer for this? Seriously. What other reason than the obvious would DeLay have for apparently obstructing a process of keeping track of votes in a permanent (and not ephemerally cyberspatial) way? IS there a good answer for holding this bill up? I'm truly interested.
Do you have any links to the debate on this bill? Have there been any entries in the Congressional Record about it? What committee is it in? What is the purpose of this bill? At first glance it just looks like it requires you to have hard copy output available for auditing and to give a copy of it to the voter. What is the advantage to this? You seem to imply that republicans would be opposed to this bill. What leads you to believe this? Why would a bill like this help Dems more than Reps? Why do you assume that Tom DeLay is obstructing this bill? What reason do you think he has? You say it is obvious. It's not obvious to me, but maybe I am a bit slower than everyone else. Why do you believe that a piece of paper is more "permanent" than a "cyberspatial" solution? The half-life of a CD or hard-drive is much greater than that of a piece of paper. I'm truly interested.
You can replace the paper, or have a fire, or spill coffee on it, or... There are also ways to determine if digital media has been tampered with that are unbreakable. You may not always be able to reconstruct the data, but you would know if it had been modified.
Why do people not want a paper-trail? a) well, besides the ability of the digital machine manufacturer to create votes for his favorite party b) local election boards wouldn't bother spending big $ on digital election machines if they had to keep paper results anyway. They'd be like, "I thought you promised we wouldn't need them? Screw it, we'll go back to the old system" c) Inevitably, the paper and digital won't match, due to the many potential problems with hardcopy records, even if the results were truly accurate. And then that opens up for more lawsuits and complaints. d) there are hundreds of ways to mess with paper records. There are ways to mess with digital results. Its a trade-off.
On a related note: http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/11380251p-12294653c.html Diebold Inc. agreed to pay $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit filed by California alleging that the electronic voting company sold the state and several counties shoddy voting equipment. And, conspiracy theorists should take note: The former computer system administrator was also upset that the state announced the deal so quickly. Several activist groups, computer scientists and federal researchers are analyzing Nov. 2 election data, looking for evidence of vote rigging or unintentional miscounts in hundreds of counties nationwide that used touch-screen terminals. Results are expected by early December. "This settlement will shut down a major avenue of investigation before evidence starts trickling in," March said. "It's very premature."
Is there ever a discrepancy between the automatic records at an ATM and the aggregate result of the paper receipts? I'm not saying things would be flawless, but this bill seems like a slam dunk. Here's another proposal. Any electronic vote counting's source code has to be pubclicly disclosed and posted on the web. The marketplace of ideas would allow any flaws to be quickly spotted and corrected. Or if it can't be corrected, then the program would be scrapped.
I don't know the real reasons for acting or not on this bill, but it looks like it will cost alot and be of no use for anything. Unless you think that you could do a recount by having everyone bring their stubs in, an absurd notion.
Better question is why don't the demos want a law that says the vote should be by voter finger print. For some unknown reason they don't like that. The republicans like it why are the demos against good way to avoid cheating. What are the demos aftraid of?
The fear with fingerprinting is that it may have the effect of intimidating voters, particularly minority voters.
So I guess you never get a receipt when you make a deposit at an ATM. Because something could conceivably happen to the paper.
I don't feel like looking it up, but ever since I have been voting, and that is 15 years now, my precinct in Ohio has been using what is called an "old type of touch screen". This touch screen is a huge ballot with flashing red lights. Once you make a selection for a particular race, the person(s) you voted for get a solid red light and not other votes for that race can be made. I never got a paper trail / copy of my vote. Where has the outrage been? Oh yea, whatever.
There's more misdirection here than in a two-bit magic act on a high school stage in Hoboken. I guess I can assume that, at least among BushCorp. adherents here, there IS no GOOD reason to delay consideration of that bill. None at all.
What misdirection are you referring to? I'm not sure if you are referring to me, but in the absence of further information, I don't think most people can make any judgement about this bill that seems to be of great concern to the original poster. Can anyone tell me what problem this bill is trying to address? It is not at all obvious to me. I do know that consideration of a lot of bills gets delayed for reasons totally unrelated to politics, and some get delayed for purely political reasons. I asked in my first post for more specifics about this bill, and I have seen no real discussion of this. Again I ask, what is the purpose and history of this bill? What committee is it stuck in? These are legitimate questions that one should know the answers to before deciding whether it is important or not.
Just as a matter of interest how long have you guys had electronic or punch card voting? Over here we still do it the old fashioned way with a cross in a box. It ain't quick but you can certainly recount them as many times as you like and there's not much danger of matters of opinion as to who you've voted for.
Here is Congressman Holt's site for this bill: http://holt.house.gov/display2.cfm?id=6282&type=Home Just in case anyone here is interested in finding out some of the background and concerns that have led to this bill. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:h.r.02239: It seems to me that if you are interested in something like this and would like to engender support, it is useful to post some basic information about it. Just a suggestion. BTW, now that I have done some more reading, it seems like a good bill. It was held up in part because there were three similar bills in the Senate, and many Congresspersons wanted to see which bill would emerge. Now, this amendment will need to be amended because it specifically calls out the 2004 election as the time for implementation. Persoanlly, I would support a bill like this, now that I have some information to base my opinion on, but it doesn't matter since I live in DC and we are taxed by but not represented in Congress.
Yeah, I guess posting a link to the actual BILL, the actual legislation on offer, with no spin from any "side," wasn't enough to get the party started.