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HELP AMERICA VOTE -- (House of Representatives - March 23, 2004)
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The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida). Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, following the election debacle in Florida in the 2000 Presidential race, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act to improve election systems across the country; but lately I have met with many election officials who are largely unaware of what that law actually says, and tonight I would like to clarify some of its provisions.
Importantly, HAVA will make money available to the Sates for new voting machines, but HAVA does not require States and localities to replace systems if they are satisfied with the ones that they have. All those jurisdictions have to do if they want to keep their equipment is just provide voters with instructions how to correct their ballot if they make a mistake before that ballot is cast and counted. So the law that Congress passed permits paper ballots if jurisdictions want to use them, it permits punch cards, it permits lever machines, it permits a central count voting system. Those are not outlawed. Indeed, I am putting in the RECORD tonight title III, section 301 from that act that explains to local election officials what the law actually says. They should not be afraid. There is no Federal pressure to do what they do not want to do.
Some States have decided to go ahead with replacing equipment before this year's Presidential elections even though there are no standards in place at the Federal level to guarantee if they purchase new machines, particularly electronic machines, that they will be secure. And 23 States, including Ohio, have thus received a waiver and are not required to have new systems in place until the first Federal election in 2006, nearly 2 years from now.
There are problems with new electronic voting machines that we did not know when this legislation was initially passed. Some, particularly the primary sponsors of this legislation, say we should leave it alone. They say let the Election Assistance Commission that was talked about in the law do its work. They say let the National Institute of Standards and Technology do its work, let us not have Congress ask any questions right now.
Well, that would be all well and good if those entities had the resources to carry out their job. But the Election Assistance Commission has been formed very late. In fact, a year late. Virtually every deadline that it was given for the issuance of voluntary guidelines to help our local election officials for reports to Congress and for assistance to State and local election authorities has been missed. Today, the commission had its first public meeting, despite the fact it has no permanent office, no equipment it can call its own, no staff beyond the four commissioners and its detailees, and not even enough money to pay for rent for its offices, nor money to pay for the publication tomorrow of State election plans in the Federal Register. It had to depend on the generosity of the General Services Administration for this step required by the Help America Vote Act. Election plans must be published, but the commission has no authority to require changes in them. Public comments will be directed to State election authorities who are free to certify themselves as having met the requirements of HAVA, which essentially at this point has no standards.
So in 45 days with their own certification and no input from the commission, they will begin to receive more than $2.3 billion to spend with no security standards and no guidance beyond the limited verbiage in the act itself. If this were any other Federal program, how many of our colleagues would be here condemning it? Testing by the National Institute of Standards and Technology on voting machines and its obligation to help develop tough standards for this new equipment was suspended for 2 months this year because of the lack of Federal money.
The commission is thankful that NIST has been able to identify $375,000 to help the technical guidance development committee get under way, but it is only getting under way. No recommendations are expected for another 9 months while the commissioners themselves recognize that State and local election authorities are looking for Federal guidelines to help them develop their own standards.
In fact, AP writer Robert Tanner said this weekend, and I will place the entire article in the RECORD, ``High-tech voting machines can miscount election results through a software bug or a crashing computer. What is even more troubling, they can be manipulated if someone hacks the computer software. And the biggest problem is without a paper ballot, there is nothing tangible to recount.''
To offer some level of guidance, the commission today voted to hold its own hearing on election voting technology within 35 days. I applaud the commission for doing so, but nothing is more important than our right to vote. We must take the time to get this right.
Mr. Speaker, I urge State and local election officials to read my remarks in the RECORD.
Election Fix Stymied by Delays, Computer Doubts, Confidence Gap
Editors Note--Problems with the election system in Florida left the winner of the 2000 presidential race in doubt for more than a month, and prompted widespread calls to reform the way the nation elects its leaders. Yet nearly four years since George W. Bush won in Florida by 537 votes, reform has been spotty. This story is part of the AP's ongoing coverage of electoral problems across the country.
(By Robert Tanner, AP National Writer)
The discord of Florida 2000 is hard to forget. Angry crowds yelling at local election officials, a paralysis that virtually halted other political work, accusations of a stolen presidential election that echo today.
But the many promises that followed the 36-day stalemate have not produced a nationwide solution to the glaring flaws exposed in the way we cast votes and count them--and another presidential election is just months away.
There's blame enough to go around. Pick any of the following, or all: President Bush and Congress; the voting machine industry; local election officials. (You can add computer scientists, the media, even mistake-prone voters.)
It's true some changes have been made: Roughly 50 million registered voters, or slightly more than a quarter nationwide, will be able to cast ballots on the latest touchscreen equipment this year.
But that leaves the glass half-full, at best, especially with the biggest reforms so far now coming in for criticism. In particular, those ATM-style electronic voting machines--once trumpeted as the solution to voting problems--are now under fire from some computer scientists and lawmakers. That, in turn, is slowing further reforms and weakening confidence in the system even more.
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``You have resistance, sort of natural resistance, to change,'' said Ken Blackwell, Ohio's secretary of state. Legislators in his state, worried about security, want an end to electronic machine purchases, even if punch cards remain in many counties.
In critics' eyes, the problems have been worsened by electoral officials blind to the dangers of a broken system or influenced by political aims, and caring too little about damage done to voters' trust. Others see the slow progress as healthy--that's the way democracies work, they argue, by publicly hashing out problems.
Either way, the bottom line is that another razor-thin presidential election could again leave a victor unclear, a system unable to smoothly resolve the problem, and a skeptical and angry public.
The pitfalls break down into three broad categories: cash, computers and confidence.
After the 2000 crisis, promises of electoral reform didn't translate into quick action. It took nearly two years for Congress to pass the law giving states money and direction to buy new machines, and improve voter registration and training.
The problem was the policy-makers were pulled in different directions--minority and disabled voters sought federal standards to ensure all had equal access to the polls, while state election officials argued local control would best serve widely different communities.
Experts produced nearly a dozen studies, including recommendations from a Gerald Ford-Jimmy Carter commission (some of its top ideas, like making Election Day a holiday and giving all felons the right to vote after serving their sentence, were promptly ignored).
Money for the states to implement reform took even longer: Of $3.8 billion promised, states have only received $650 million so far.
The commission that was to be created to dole out money and advice was delayed by arguments between the White House and Congress. Members weren't appointed until December, less than a year before the 2004 election.
``I put the largest blame on Congress itself,'' said Kim Brace, an elections expert who consults with states. ``They built up a lot of hope in the rhetoric side and fell through dramatically on the action side. And certainly on the dollars.''
THE DELAYS CONTINUE
Critical technical work on voting machines, tasked to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, was suspended for two months this year because of a lack of federal money. The institute's job? Make sure standards are tough for computerized touchscreen voting machines.
And that leads to the heart of the fight: Critics, including some prominent Democrats, say the ATM-style machines are a bigger danger than punch cards. Source of the infamous ``hanging chad'' ballots that left Florida election commissioners trying to divine voter intent from bumps on the cards.
Laterly, those warnings have been heard: Besides Ohio, officials are reconsidering or delaying the switch to new machines in California, West Virginia, Utah, and more.
``Why trade one imperfect system for another imperfect system?'' David Wilde, a councilman in Salt Lake County, asked when questions were raised there about switching to touchscreen machines.
COMPUTER SCIENTISTS' WORRIES RUN MUCH DEEPER
The high-tech voting machines, they say, can miscount election results through a software bug or a crashing computer; what's even more troubling, they can be manipulated if someone hacks the computer's software. And the biggest problem is that, without a paper ballot, there is nothing tangible to recount.
Because the voting machine industry keeps its computer code secret, claiming competitive business concerns, no one can be truly confident that the machines are as secure as they promise, critics say.
``If something can be stolen, eventually it will be,'' said Barbara Simons, a retired IBM computer scientist. ``Our democracy is much too valuable to trust them to this machine. ..... If the election is close--or the opinion polls are close--that means people aren't going to trust the outcome. And there's no way to convince them that they are right.''
The solution, in this view, are ``voter verifiable paper trails''--a paper ballot that the computer prints after a vote is cast, that the voter can see to ensure their choice was accurately recorded, and that will be locked away for any recount.
A number of studies of the electronic machines have confirmed the doubts including a harshly critical one from Johns Hopkins University. Studies in Maryland and Ohio also found flaws, but said they could be corrected.
The divide is deep, however, with exasperated election officials and executives from the voting machine industry arguing that critics are inflating small problems into systemwide dangers and frightening voters unnecessarily.
``I think touchscreen is the best voting system,'' said Pam Iorio, the former elections supervisor in Florida's Hillsborough County (Tampa), where touchscreens were installed. ``Election officials have just not been able to get their message out.''
The paper trail proposed would ``do more harm than good,'' said Dawn Williams, who oversees elections in Marshall County, Iowa. The receipts will just confuse voters, add more equipment to break down and more burdens for poll workers.
Primary elections so far this year have produced small glitches--machines that failed to boot up in San Diego, coding problems in Georgia and Maryland--but no outright disasters. Supporters of the new technology say that proves the wisdom of their confidence; doubters say it shows nothing of the sort.
The suspicion of critics is compounded by the fact that election officials and the voting machine industry are often closely intertwined.
Washington state's secretary of state went to work in the industry; so did several election officials in California. Under scrutiny is a job change in California, when the former state official in charge of evaluating voting machines took a top job with Election Systems and Software, a large manufacturer.
Those in the relatively small world of elections say that's natural.
``I personally don't see anything wrong with it,'' said Ernie Hawkins, who retired last year as head of Sacramento's election division. ``You know the business, you know the problem, you know where the dangers are. I'd probably be more inclined to listen to someone who was trying to sell me something if they knew what they were talking about.''
And don't leave out the politics. The chief executive of Ohio-based Diebold Inc., one of the largest voting machine manufacturers and a top target of security critics, is a top fund-raiser for the Bush campaign. In an August fund-raising letter, Walden O'Dell sought $10,000 donations and declared he was ``committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''
He later announced that he would ``try to be more sensitive'' and would lower his political profile.
While errors are inevitable in a system recording tens of millions of votes nationally, it's clear that scrutiny of the voting system will be at an all-time high this year. A greater-than-usual number of election officials have quit or taken retirement. Others are just hoping for a presidential blowout.
``Every election official's prayer is, you hear many times, they really don't care who wins,'' said Richard Smolka, an elections expert and retired political science professor. ``They just don't want the election to be that close.''
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TITLE III--UNIFORM AND NONDISCRIMINATORY ELECTION TECHNOLOGY AND ADMINISTRATION REQUIREMENTS
Subtitle A--Requirements
SEC. 301. VOTING SYSTEMS STANDARDS.
(a) REQUIREMENTS.--Each voting system used in an election for Federal office shall meet the following requirements:
(1) IN GENERAL.--
(A) Except as provided in subparagraph (
, the voting system (including any lever voting system, optical scanning voting system, or direct recording electronic system) shall-- (i) permit the voter to verify (in a private and independent manner) the votes selected by the voter on the ballot before the ballot is cast and counted;
(ii) provide the voter with the opportunity (in a private and independent manner) to change the ballot or correct any error before the ballot is cast and counted (including the opportunity to correct the error through the issuance of a replacement ballot if the voter was otherwise unable to change the ballot or correct any error); and
(iii) if the voter selects votes for more than one candidate for a single office--
(I) notify the voter that the voter has selected more than one candidate for a single office on the ballot;
(II) notify the voter before the ballot is cast and counted of the effect of casting multiple votes for the office; and
(III) provide the voter with the opportunity to correct the ballot before the ballot is cast and counted.
(
A State or jurisdiction that uses a paper ballot voting system, a punch card voting system, or a central count voting system (including mail-in absentee ballots and mail-in ballots), may meet the requirements of subparagraph (A)(iii) by-- (i) establishing a voter education program specific to that voting system that notifies each voter of the effect of casting multiple votes for an office; and
(ii) providing the voter with instructions on how to correct the ballot before it is cast and counted (including instructions on how to correct the error through the issuance of a replacement ballot if the voter was otherwise unable to change the ballot or correct any error).
© The voting system shall ensure that any notification required under this paragraph preserves the privacy of the voter and the confidentiality of the ballot.
(2) AUDIT CAPACITY.--
(A) IN GENERAL.--The voting system shall produce a record with an audit capacity for such system.
(
MANUAL AUDIT CAPACITY.-- (i) The voting system shall produce a permanent paper record with a manual audit capacity for such system.
(ii) The voting system shall provide the voter with an opportunity to change the ballot or correct any error before the permanent paper record is produced.
(iii) The paper record produced under subparagraph (A) shall be available as an official record for any recount conducted with respect to any election in which the system is used.