Writing my Senators

This morning I decided that I should write my Senators. Why? Electronic voting. The picture that accompanies this post is an electronic voting machine. You probably saw one (maybe you used one) in the last election. After the mess that was the 2000 election Congress passed the HAVA1. One requirement of HAVA was that all local governments must provide for individuals with special needs. Electronic voting machines were an easy route since not only could they support the blind they could also support non-english speakers. Since some local governments were buying new machines to comply with the act anyway whole precincts were replaced with these voting machines2.

What’s the problem with this? Well besides the fact that the machine’s are easily hacked3; that the CEO of one voting machine company has personally endorsed and said he would “deliver” the election to Bush in 2004; the fact that the voting machine manufactures refuse to release the source code4; that there is no voter verified paper trail for most of these machines; or maybe that some of these voting machines can be opened with the same key that opens a minibar5? Well besides those small details they’re pretty great!

Some of these problems can be resolved in a fairly simple manner, a voter verified paper trail. If the voting machine immediately prints exactly what it’s storing into it’s memory to paper so there is a paper receipt of the vote that the voter can verify and if needed can be used in a manual recount it doesn’t matter how the machine tallies the votes. Currently there is no law requiring voting machines to have such a paper trail, and almost none do. This is changing and there is currently a bill working it’s way through the Senate to change this (S. 3212). However, the bill makes an exception for voting machines purchased before January that were bought to comply to HAVA. This is completely unacceptable. If the exception stands these insecure voting machines will undoubtedly remain in use for years.

When I found out I decided that I needed to write to my Senators. Most of these machines in Iowa are only used to meet the requirements of HAVA in order to accommodate disabled voters. One Iowa Senator, Tom Harkin, has a long history of supporting disabled voters. The other Iowa Senator, Chuck Grassley, I really don’t know how he’ll stand on this. Either way, I thought that it was important enough that I let both of my Senators know my feelings on this issue. S. 3212 appears to be a good bill with many measures needed to fix the electronic voting mess and I hope it passes, even with this exception.

One last thing. There is a really easy way to avoid all of this. Use paper ballots. There are braile ballots and ballots printed in other languages. It’s not that hard, and doesn’t need any fancy, and expensive, toys to fix.

For those of you who wish to contact their senators I’ve included my letter as a sample. Most senators and representatives have online forms that are respected just as much as a paper letter. It doesn’t take much time. Just fill in the lines I’ve left for your information and google “contact ” generally the first hit will be the page you want.

Dear Senator ______, It has come to my attention that a highly necessary bill to improve the accountability of America’s electronic voting machines is making it’s way through the Senate (S. 3212). I support this change no matter the expense as very little is more important then the accountability and security of our elections.

However, there is an exception placed in this bill for voting machines purchased before January 1, 2009 to meet HAVA’s requirements. Such an exception would lead to Americans that use these machines because they must (the disabled and non-English speakers) to use these sub-par, unverifiable voting machines for years.

I understand an exception may be needed to allow local governments to meet the law for this coming election cycle however I think the exception should have a termination point. Give local governments a grace period, but don’t give them the chance to marginalize these voters forever. Thank you for your time.

  1. Help America Vote Act ↩

  2. As opposed to what you find in most of the country with a few of these machines but most polls still being tradition ballots of some kind. ↩

  3. If you only click on one link from this article let it be this one. ↩

  4. This is the code that controls how the machine works. Normally it would be perfectly normal for a company to want to obscure the code in their product. However elections are a process that must be completely open in order to ensure people’s faith in them. ↩

  5. I tried to find a better source for this but I’m lazy and didn’t look very long. Believe me, it’s true. ↩