A Flawed US Election Reform Bill

H.R.811 sounds great: It's stated purpose is "to require a voter-verified permanent paper ballot." Unfortunately, it sounds like the details have some devils, as usual. From the Bev Harris article Is a flawed bill better than no bill?: "[T]he Holt Bill provides for a paper trail (toilet paper roll-style records affixed to DRE voting machines) in 2008, requires more durable ballots in 2010, and requires a complex set of audits. It also cements and further empowers a concentration of power over elections under the White House, gives explicit federal sanction to trade secrets in vote counting, mandates an expensive 'text conversion' device that does not yet exist which is not fully funded, and removes 'safe harbor' for states in a way that opens them up to unlimited, expensive, and destabilizing litigation." Update: 07/11 16:23 GMT by KD : Derek Slater writes "EFF's e-voting expert Matt Zimmerman recently published this article separating the myths about HR 811 from the facts, and countering many of the misleading and outright false claims being made about it."

Comments

Pwned by muscle memory

[tttonyyy]

Type "Wii" to much and you start producing words like "Biill".

I knew I was a PHP ubergeek when I found myself typing "mysql" automatically whenever I meant to type "myself" in e-mails (and I did it typing this sentence and had to correct it, I kid you not!).

Is this a surprise to anyone?

[conspirator57]

On top of the usual politicking and industry appeasement, there is the fact that there is only one engineer in congress now, and he's a civil.

If as our fearless leaders say "the future of America is the knowledge worker and innovator" then we must start electing a few (or more) people with technical backgrounds.

For this to happen, some of us introverted technical folks are going to have to swallow that and run for office.

Re:My opinion

[Dachannien]

In other words, the US election system sucks because we don't just vote for a supreme overlord and be done with it?

Although, if there were a box on my ballot labeled, "I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords," I'd probably check it.