Legislation

Description:

The Legislation Working Group researches and advocates for the enactment of electoral legislation at the state and local levels to promote voting systems that are fully transparent, verifiable, and accountable to the citizens.

We will work to ban DRE voting machines and privatized, nondisclosed source code in the operation of any voting system, and for the institution of meaningful vote auditing and recount procedures effective in detecting and remediating electoral fraud.

To defend existing electronic voting systems against known vulnerabilities to fraud, we will advocate passage of legislation to institute mandatory, rigorous hand-count election auditing and verification procedures inclusive of all ballots cast, according to protocols adequate to assure detection of fraud with a high degree of precision and low margin of error across a full range of voting environments.

We will also pursue legislative implementation of secure computing practices on par with national defense requirements, including strict bans on interpreter code, prohibition of any modem or wireless communications connections to any voting system component, and the requirement that any data storage or memory media used to access voting records be read-only.

Our ultimate legislative goal, whenever and wherever possible, will be to establish precinct-based hand-counting of paper ballots as the mandatory standard for secure and verifiable elections.

Recognizing that the transition from present voting systems to an all hand-counted paper ballot system may require phased implementation, we will be prepared to advocate as an interim solution precinct-based, publicly owned and operated optical scan systems running oen-source, publicy reviewed software that produces a human-readable ballot image scan available for public verification.

Another method EDA advocates to prevent covert fraud resulting in illegitimate government, is  to implement a split-ballot counting protocol in which contests for federal and statewide elective office are hand-counted, with all other contests and issues counted by scanner.

We further will seek state constitutional amendments that declare every citizen's right to have their vote counted as cast; that include a voter's bill of rights enumerating the conditions necessary for free, fair, transparent and verifiable elections; and that promote full access and participation in the voting process.

Members:
Tom Courbat CA
Sherry Healy CA
Brent Turner CA
Carol Waser DC
Roy Lipscomb IL
Sally Castleman MA
Paul Lehto MI
Phil Lindsey MO
Nancy Tobi  NH
Stuart Hutchison NJ
Diana Finch NY
John Burik OH
Chris Lee PA
Tom Manaugh TX
Kathy Dopp UT
Ellen Stone WA
Bev Harris WA