[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 37 (Tuesday, March 23, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H1349-H1351]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 2000
HELP AMERICA VOTE
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.
[[Page H1350]]
``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.''
____
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 (B), 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.
(B) 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).
(C) 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.
(B) 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.
[[Page H1351]]
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