Via E-Mail:Dear ,
There are about four months to go before Americans cast their ballots in another important national election. Will our votes be counted as we cast them? Will our votes be counted at all?
We are working hard to avoid a recurrence of the voting mess in recent elections. We need you support.
http://www.commoncause.org/SecureElectionsThe support of our activists gave us the resources to do an exhaustive report on electronic voting machines. Read our new report,
Malfunction and Malfeasance: A Report on the Electronic Voting Machine Debacle. You'll learn more about one of the major unresolved problems in our election system. The report not only explains what the problems are, but lays out seven recommendations for our elected officials and for you, the voter.
With your generous support, we can do more. We will keep pushing to pass legislation in Congress and in the states. We will produce more reports - reports that will not just sit on a shelf (or our website), but will be used to galvanize the public and elected leaders to fix this problem.
Thank you for all you do.
Malfunction and Malfeasance:
A Report on the Electronic Voting Machine Debacle
This report surveys four major studies that reviewed DRE voting machine security and reliability. Two of the reports involved extensive review of more than 80 academic, technical, and industry reports on DREs. Each report concluded DRE machines to be vulnerable to malfunction and also to tampering in which a computer-savvy hacker with minimal access to the machine could introduce malicious code to the DRE software and change the results of an election. Such manipulation could be undetectable. In machines equipped with a modem, it could even be done from a remote location.
Furthermore, there have been at least seven reported occasions since 2002 in which electronic voting machines added or removed votes in real elections, calling into question the final results of a race. For example, this spring, as states across the country conducted primary elections, a programming error caused a DRE in Tarrant County, Texas, to record an additional 100,000 votes that were never actually cast. The election outcome is being challenged by a candidate who lost by 6,000 votes.
Despite the security problems and serious malfunctions, in November DRE machines will be used in 37 states, with 39 percent of voters expected to vote on them. In many of these states, there are no adequate safeguards in place. State law either does not require the voting system to produce a voter-verified paper ballot or does not require a statistically meaningful and transparent audit process. These states are at risk of compromised elections due to DRE malfunction or tampering.
This report includes a chart detailing the status of each state, along with a chart detailing the level of risk for voters in each state, and chart showing which medium and high risk states allow no-excuse absentee voting.
To address these problems, Common Cause makes eight recommendations:
- Congress should immediately pass HR 550, "The Voter Confidence
and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005."
- States should pass laws or adopt regulations requiring all voting
systems to produce a voter verifiable paper ballot and mandate
that at least a random two percent of voting jurisdictions conduct
public audits of their voting systems.
- Election officials should take necessary steps to safeguard machines
prior to Election Day.
- State election officials should, wherever possible, immediately retrofit...
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