Hi All,
Thanks to those of you
who contacted
your state Senator
about Coloradans for
Voting Integrity’s two amendments
related to HB11-1219 (UMOVA).
Last Friday, that bill, the Colorado version of "Uniform
Bill
UMOVA" (related to military and overseas civilian voting), passed on 3rd reading, with only one of the two amendments we proposed incorporated.
CFVI’s Amendment #2 (defining which voters are covered by the bill) was
included, so
in the end, the “covered
voters” included military
personnel who are "absent" from their home state, but not ALL military. So
that was a positive.
The Senate failed, however, to rule out electronic transmission of voted ballots, as
CFVI proposed in our Amendment #1.
Our present law on this matter allows return of voted
ballots by overseas
military via fax,
or electronic mail "in circumstances where another more secure voting method is not available or feasible." [See CRS 2010.1-8-103.5(2)(a), (4)]
HB11-1219, however, extends the limited use of this procedure to all out-of-state active
military and
all possible categories of overseas civilians. Our concerns that
such an
exception would not be administered as intended were ignored. Who determines that no more secure
method is available, and what will "feasible" be interpreted to mean?
So, our Amendment #1 was
ignored,
despite evidence of widespread efforts (as in the national MOVE
Act) to
· lengthen the timeline
for the election process and
· allow electronic
transmission of blank ballots and other
voting materials.
These changes have been made partly so that electronic
transmission of
voted ballots could be avoided, because such
a procedure is so insecure. Non-electronic means such as
mail or FedEx are available as alternatives.
The misinformation
campaigns of
vendors and the DOD prevailed in Colorado; the solid information
of the
computer security scientists did not. Voters lost.
But we are not giving
up, to
carelessly hand over our elections to self-serving
parties!
In 2009, our legislature passed a law allowing our Colorado 2012 elections to include a DOD-run pilot project on Internet voting. Despite the insecurity of the Internet for voting, the pilot project will be run in our ACTUAL election, not in a mock one! The law requires measures which cannot be fulfilled. (See CRS 2010. 1-5.5-101.)
Any good ideas on how
to deal with
this misguided legislation are welcomed!
Best Wishes,
Margit
Margit Johansson
Coloradans for Voting
Integrity
(CFVI)
303-442-1668