[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 13058]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              VERIFYING OFFICIAL TOTALS FOR ELECTIONS ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Johnson) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I will introduce today the 
Verifying Official Totals for Elections Act, also known as the VOTE 
Act.
  Electronic voting machines are vulnerable to poor design and 
tampering, and there is currently no way to verify the accuracy of an 
electronic vote count. The VOTE Act will ensure the integrity of our 
voting machines system by requiring any software used in an electronic 
voting system for any Federal election to be deposited in the National 
Software Reference Library. Depositing the software in the National 
Software Reference Library will allow the software to be available for 
review in the event of an election contest or recount.
  The VOTE Act is definitely needed. We are 97 days away from a crucial 
election and, according to a recent report, half the States have 
inadequate post-audit election procedures for electronic voting 
machines. It also found that a quarter of States have post-audit 
election procedures that need improvement. Further, the report found 
that in every national election in the past decade, computerized voting 
systems have failed, machines did not start or failed in the middle of 
voting, memory cards could not read, and votes were mistallied.
  I'm sure that you all who are computer literate out there have had a 
computer and you were working on it and suddenly it froze up.

                              {time}  1030

  In order to unfreeze it, you had to reboot it, and in the process, 
you lost all of your data that you were working on; or some of you may 
have had the misfortune of a computer hard drive just freezing up on 
you and just crashing, and you had to take it somewhere and try to 
retrieve your data off of that hard drive, and it cost a whole lot of 
money. You may have even manipulated your child's computer to prevent 
access to a dangerous Web site; or somebody may have installed, 
unbeknownst to you, some software on your laptop computer that you 
carry around so that one can keep track of your whereabouts.
  These are the kinds of things that we must be concerned about as far 
as our electronic voting machines--their accuracy and the fact that 
they can be manipulated.
  There have been several e-voting inaccuracies since 2006, including 
prominent controversies in South Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania. 
The VOTE Act provides peace of mind. It does so by requiring that the 
source code, or the blueprint, of the e-voting system be stored in the 
National Software Reference Library, which will allow auditors to 
compare that code with the actual machine to determine if there has 
been any improper activity.
  This is an urgent problem, and the VOTE Act is the solution. The 
right to vote is fundamental to our democratic process, and it is 
protected by the Constitution of the United States. The right to vote 
is protected by more constitutional amendments--the First, 14th, 15th, 
19th, 24th, and 26th--than is any other right we enjoy as Americans. 
Thus, it is vital to ensure the integrity of that vote. We must do 
everything in our power to ensure that every American who casts a vote 
in the upcoming election is counted.
  I thank Common Cause, Florida Voting, VerifiedVoting.org, and the 
North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting for endorsing this bill.
  I urge all of my colleagues to support the VOTE Act, and I invite 
Members from both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans, to 
cosponsor this bill. Protecting the vote and the integrity of the 
voting process is not a partisan issue, but an issue that is important 
to all citizens and vital to the strength of America.

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