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From: AlKolwicz
[mailto:AlKolwicz@xxxxxxxxx] HB 1296 will be heard by the State, Veterans, and Military
Affairs committee this Thursday afternoon. It is very important that this bill be amended or
defeated. It is posted at http://www.leg.state.co.us/CLICS2004A/csl.nsf/fsbillcont3/2B1087A3259B4C8287256DF8005CBB75?Open&file=1296_01.pdf
As written, the bill would legitimize digital ballots which
cannot be verified by the voter. It would also legitimize more than one
ballot per voter – a digital ballot and a paper document (something like
a cash register receipt). This is not acceptable. Please contact the committee members and let them know that
the public insists on one ballot per voter and it must be a paper ballot that
is verified by the voter. We have submitted the following recommended changes to the
bill.
Please call and leave a short message, including your phone
number, and write a brief e-mail to:
From: AlKolwicz
[mailto:AlKolwicz@xxxxxxxxx] Rep. Schultheis, Hope everything is going well for you this session.
On Thursday, HB 1296 is scheduled to be heard by the State, Veterans, and
Military Affairs committee. We have studied this bill and plan to
testify. Unless amended, HB 1296 has major problems and should not be passed. It would
legalize practices that would compromise elections and the public’s trust
in election results. However, the
current bill can and should be amended to move Several of us met today with Rep. Madden, and in my
opinion she appeared open to the following changes if they can help obtain
passage of the bill. Roughly,
the changes would be as follows:
The significance of these changes
is described below. In our opinion, with these changes this bill should
be passed; without these changes this bill should be defeated. We expect the vendors and the Secretary of State to
oppose these changes; they already oppose the bill as written. Their priority seems
to be convenience to
vendors and election officials.
The
public relies
on the law to protect the interests of the public. As
drafted, the bill would place the
interests of the public at risk. That’s why we recommend the 3 changes. I hope that you will support these
changes. If they are adopted, I hope you’ll work to pass the
bill. If they are not adopted, we hope that you’ll work to defeat
the bill. Please let me know if there is
anything I can do to help. Al Significance of recommended changes
to HB 1296 The
recommended changes are intended to
make clear that there is only one ballot, the paper ballot that contains the
full-ballot-text; it must be verified by the voter before it is cast, and it is
the only record used for counting and for recounting. The
current language would permit both a digital ballot, which is not verifiable by
the voter, and a second record which appears intended to present voters with
the impression that they are verifying their digital ballot (which they are
not). The second record could take any form such as marks on a grid with
no ballot text, or abstracts of votes (one line per race). Neither of
these is easily verifiable by the voter. Also, the current language would
permit media such as roll feed paper (similar to cash register receipts) which
are not useful for recounting, and would permit paper records that don’t
look the same as an absentee ballot for the same races in the same
jurisdiction. Because
votes are necessarily anonymous, only the voter can verify that their votes are
recorded correctly. Nobody else can do this. Also, nobody has
demonstrated a trustworthy way for a voter to verify that their votes are
recorded correctly when they are recorded on a digital memory. Even if it
were possible, there is currently no voting system that guarantees the
integrity of digital ballots after they are initially recorded.
Therefore, as of today only a paper ballot meets the public’s
requirements for verifiability and security. Finally,
the slips of paper would not be ballots unless there is a recount. This
is not satisfactory. High recount costs, compensating errors, and clever
manipulation to avoid statutory recounts suggest that these slips of paper come
would nearly never be used for recounting. Therefore, under this bill,
election outcomes would be determined by digital ballots that were not verified
by the voter. NOTE-1:
As you know, Colorado’s current paper ballot system includes: (1) a
uniquely identified (2) removable ballot stub, (3) administrative responsibilities
for controlling the whereabouts of every single ballot, and (4) a system of
laws and procedures that prescribe mandatory records – such as poll
books. This system provides campaigns, voters and officials with a way to
track electors who did and did not vote, and ballots that are and are not
cast. It enables canvass board members to “balance” the
election. Within the limits of human knowledge, it guarantees that each
eligible elector is given the opportunity to vote once and only once.
DRE voting machines do not provide these protections. NOTE-2:
There is at least one vendor of voting equipment that has a product that scans
a pre-printed un-voted paper ballot, provides the voter with a way to make
voting selection, and prints the voter’s choices onto their paper ballot.
This system warns of under votes, prevents over votes, almost eliminates
legibility problems, and meets the needs of disabled voters to vote in
private. Once the votes are printed, the voter may re-insert their voted
ballot into the machine and the machine informs the voter how the votes will be
interpreted for counting. We expect most vote recording equipment to look
like this because its voter verifiable full-ballot-text paper ballot can
achieve higher voter confidence and higher election quality than today’s
paper ballot system. Unverified
digital-ballots and feel-good slips-of-paper fail to meet the standards of
today’s paper ballot system. This is not the time to go backwards. CAMBER Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results 303-494-1540 www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz
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