EFF predicts that the Holt bill will finally be coming to the floor for a vote later this week. As Larry Nordin and I wrote last month (and as I wrote in The American in May) the bill would be an important step in the direction of a more secure and reliable voting process. If you didn’t catch it, be sure to check out the discussion we had on the podcast with Ed Felten on e-voting reform and the Holt bill.
Still, I agree with EFF’s Matt Zimmerman that the Holt bill leaves a lot to be desired:
Are DREs, even those utilizing VVPATs, fraught with problems? Of course. Should more rigorous audits be mandated? Absolutely. But a heartfelt desire to ban DREs or improve audits is no reason to oppose this bill, especially since states are not prohibited from making either of these reforms — or nearly any other voting system-related reform — on their own.
Our support for HR 811 is tempered by profound disappointment that one of the bill’s pillars has been watered down to the point of ineffectiveness due to pressure from the proprietary software industry. The source code disclosure provisions, requiring that voting system source code be disclosed at the very least to litigants and other “qualified persons” who can test the integrity of the voting system under a non-disclosure agreement, have since the bill’s introduction been replaced by a requirement that “voting system software” — a definition that does not explicitly include source code — be disclosed. While “correcting” language was included in the Committee Report as a result of prompt feedback from computer security experts after the bill’s current language was released, that Report will likely not be sufficient to ensure source code access. Having litigated cases in which prompt access to voting system source code is critical, EFF’s strong advocacy for this bill has been based in large part on the source code disclosure requirement. We call on Rep. Zoe Lofgren and the other members of the Elections Subcommittee to promptly fix this provision — using the explicit language included in the Committee Report — before the bill makes it to the floor of the House.
Probably the biggest problem with the latest versions of the Holt bill are the provisions allowing the use of cheap thermal printers in the 2008 and 2010 elections. In my opinion, using these cheap printers might be worse than no paper trail at all, because they’re prone to jamming and because if the paper is left on the reels it can compromise vote anonymity. I would rather have legislation that exempted states entirely for 2008 and imposed more rigorous standards for 2010 than to try to impose half-baked reforms for 2008 that end up making the concept of paper trails look bad.
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