VR Campaign: Election Standards Must Comply With The Law And The Public Interest!

Use this link to sign and send the following letter to the EAC and NIST:

http://www.velvetrevolution.us/mailing.php?Mailing=02FA807D5000506022D32

TO: All members of the Election Assistance Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology

SUBJECT: Election Standards Must Comply With The Law And The Public Interest!

MESSAGE TEXT:
I am joining VelvetRevolution, VoteTrustUSA and over 100 other electoral reform and voting rights groups in demanding that the standards to be adopted by the Election Assistance Commission be in the public interest and in compliance with the federal Help American Vote Act. I am very concerned, on the basis of published reports and witness accounts, that members of the National Institute of Standards and Technology will recommend vendor friendly standards because they are both beholden to and influenced by the manufacturers of the voting machines at the expense of the public interest. If true, this would violate both the charter of the EAC and federal law under HAVA.

As you are well aware, there is grave concern by millions of Americans that the machines used in the 2004 general election, especially the Direct Recording Electronic ("DRE") touch-screen machines, did not accurately reflect the will of the people. Of course, because many of these machines had no paper ballots to compare with the machine tallies, there is no way of determining precisely the actual count from the machines. What is clear, however, is that many voters, including myself, do not trust the machines or the voting machine companies, and we demand to know with certainty that our votes will be counted in all future elections.

I have been informed that during the April 20-21 hearings with NIST and the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (“TGDC”), several of the Voting Machine Company representatives spoke with Paul Craft, one of the members of the TGDC, and demanded that key proposed standards be removed from the proposals to be sent to the EAC. Mr. Craft and Dr. Brit Williams then pushed a vote through to remove those standards, which had included a requirement that all DREs be equipped with a serial port and software to allow a state or county to use an off-the-shelf printer for printing verified paper ballots.

Moreover, it appears that the TGCD has ignored the HAVA requirement of no more than one error per 500,000 ballots. This standard applies to actual ballots, not test ballots, yet the standards now under development do not include any method for allowing county officials to ensure compliance. Indeed, the only true method of doing so is by comparing machine-generated results with independently audited results, such as hand counting of paper ballots.

In short, I have five demands:

1) That people with a financial interest in the standards (the Voting Machine Companies and their allies) be removed from the development process so the final standards are truly in the public interest as required by the EAC charter. I am concerned that Dr. Brit Williams and Paul Craft are so closely tied to the vending companies that their participation creates an appearance of a conflict of interest if not an actual conflict of interest.

2) That the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail standards be developed to safeguard the public interest, and this includes allowing machines with a serial port for a variety of printers and allowing all feasible VVPAT systems rather than just those currently developed by vendors lobbying NIST and EAC.

3) That the VVPAT standards require the ballots produced to be countable during initial counts, manual audits, and recounts. Thermal paper rolls are not acceptable for such counts.

4) That a section be included in the standards to ensure compliance with the HAVA accuracy requirement - Section 301(a)(5) - something that can only be accomplished through the presence of voter-verified paper ballots that can be hand counted and compared to a machine count after an actual election.

5) That the standards be adopted using best practices even if that means that machines already purchased will be non-compliant.

Thank you for your consideration of my comments and I look forward to the standards the EAC adopts as a result.

Sincerely,