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Dems' Split Over House Voting Rules Spurs Chortles From GOP    [

    A Chance to Make Votes Count
    The New York Times | Editorial

    Thursday 06 September 2007

    The United States Congress has a chance to take a big step toward reassuring Americans that the votes they cast on Election Day will not be lost or stolen. The House is considering a bill sponsored by Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, that could come to a vote as soon as today that would make electronic voting both more reliable and less prone to fraud. The bill lacks one important thing: a ban on touch-screen voting machines. But even in its current form, it goes a long way toward fixing a voting system that has been clearly broken for many years. The House should pass it, and the Senate should pass its own bill without delay.

    Electronic voting has been an abysmal failure. Computer experts have done study after study showing that electronic voting machines, which are often shoddily made, can easily be hacked. With little effort, vote totals can be changed and elections stolen. In many recent elections, voters have complained of "vote flipping," in which touch-screen machines took votes cast for one candidate and gave them to an opponent.

    When these machines do not produce a paper record of each vote that can be independently counted, voters have to accept the totals they report on faith. That is unacceptable. Testing laboratories, which are supposed to independently verify the integrity of voting machines, are rife with conflicts, since they accept money from the manufacturers.

    Mr. Holt's bill would solve many of these problems. It would require machines used in federal elections to produce "voter-verifiable paper records," a paper record of every ballot cast that voters could check to ensure that their choices were properly recorded. Those records would then be audited to confirm the accuracy of the machine totals. The bill would also crack down on testing laboratories' conflicts of interest.

    It is unfortunate that the bill does not contain a provision banning the use of touch-screen voting machines. A touch-screen ban would encourage states to use optical scan machines, which rely on paper ballots read by a computer, like a standardized test form. Optical scans are less expensive and less vulnerable to vote theft.

    There is still time before the bill becomes law to add a ban on touch-screen voting. If the House fails to do so, the Senate should, and it should fight for it to be in the final bill.

    There has been a spirited debate about how quickly to require reforms to be implemented. There have been calls for putting a solution off until 2012. That is too long to wait. Congress should push states to act quickly, while allowing exceptions for states that truly need more time to put a reliable system in place. Many Americans lost faith in their election system after the 2000 election. They have waited long enough for it to be fixed.

 

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    Dems' Split Over House Voting Rules Spurs Chortles From GOP
    By Mike Soraghan and Jackie Kucinich
    The Hill

    Friday 07 September 2007

    The House Rules Committee, known as "the Speaker's Committee," is considered an arm of leadership. So when two panel members - including the chairwoman - balk at a Democratic bill, minority members are quick to chortle that Speaker
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is losing control of her top lieutenants.

    "It's a rebuke of the Speaker," a Republican leadership aide said. "The real question is, Will Pelosi fire or replace [Chairwoman Louise] Slaughter [D-N.Y.]?"

    Wednesday afternoon, the Rules Committee took up an election reform bill by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.). The bill would amend the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) by requiring states to use voting machines that provide a "paper trail" or verifiable paper ballot.

    Slaughter quickly indicated she didn't like the bill, and raised questions about the quality of the new paper ballot machines.

    "I am very much concerned that we are passing this law that you have to have it by a certain date," Slaughter said during the hearing, "when experts tell us there is not a machine that will do this right."

    In an interview, Slaughter said New York election authorities would have trouble getting equipment to replace their lever-pull machines in time for the deadline mandated in the bill.

    She wasn't the only one to express concerns. Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Democrat from Florida, said the bill didn't go far enough.

    "I need to be persuaded. Otherwise I would do something that I have not done since I have been here, and that is vote against a proposed rule," Hastings said, according to a transcript. "If we ain't gonna fix it all, then we oughtn't fix something that ain't a fix and is not an assurance that we have done the best we can. This isn't good enough for me."

    The committee membership is tilted far enough in favor of majority Democrats - 9-4 - that the bill could have passed even with Slaughter and Hastings voting no. Still, a vote on a rule to move the bill to the floor was postponed.

    Holt went into the committee meeting hoping to have the path cleared for a vote this week. Now it looks as though that won't happen until next week. Holt said it's not surprising that a complex election bill would run into problems with elected officials.

    "It's a complicated issue about which every member of Congress believes he or she is an expert," Holt said.

    Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami dismissed Republican rhetoric as overheated and oversimplified.

    "How many years were Republicans in power and didn't bring meaningful election reform?" Elshami said.

    A spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) called the Republican accusations "overblown."

    "It's something that's been a conversation for some time," Stacey Farnen Bernards said. "It's not something we weren't aware of."

    Slaughter cast it as a difference in styles. Republicans march in lockstep, she said, while Democrats let it all hang out in public debates.

    "Democrats believe in democracy, unlike that monolith we had before," she said.

    Committee Republicans say it shows disorganization on the part of Democrats.

    "This is the kind of chaos that does a disservice to all members and a disservice to the House," said Jo Maney, a spokeswoman for Rep. David Dreier (Calif.), the top Republican on the panel. "All of these questions result in dysfunction and chaos."

    House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said it was hard to understand why a bill would be brought to committee if the panel's members were uncomfortable with what was in it.

    "It's pretty interesting that the chairman of the Rules Committee is not going to be able to be for [the legislation]," Blunt said.

    This is not the first time the bill has run into trouble. The bill was sailing toward passage in the spring until a coalition of county election officials launched a lobbying campaign against it. A House Administration Committee vote was postponed unexpectedly after election officials from across the country testified before the Elections subcommittee.

    The bill also requires an audit of every federal election and seeks to set standards to prevent hacking into voting machines.

    "I don't buy the argument of state election officials that they can't do it. So many states have already done it," Holt said.

    On Thursday, Slaughter said the latest problems are being worked out. The bill will come back to the Rules Committee today with an amendment to let New York use its lever machines for voting until 2010.

    Still, delay does cause a problem, Holt said.

    "Every day it's delayed makes it easier for states to say they can't implement it," he said.