By Trish and Ellen, Rapid Response Iowa
They are working with state legislators to introduce a bill that will bring paper
ballots and verified voting to all Iowa elections.
Your
help is now needed. County Auditors may well be resistant to more
changes in equipment; last year the Iowa's Auditors' association
opposed even the modest bill SF 351, which would only have required
that paper printers be added to the touchscreens.
Action:
consider calling or writing your County Auditor and ask her or him to
support legislation that would replace touchscreens in Iowa. Be sure to note that you support legislation that would have the state fund the transition to paper ballots.
Click here for contact information for all the County Auditors in Iowa:
http://www.sos.state.ia.us/elections/auditors/AuditorsList.htmlbeing introduced this week by U.S. Representative Rush Holt will
establish strict new standards for the paper rolls, which no current
touchscreen system meets. This will strongly favor paper ballots, with
assistive marking devices for disabled voters.
Contact your auditor:
may ask, why not just add the printer on to the touchscreen to allow
the voter to see their vote on paper? Below is some information.
IVI chair Carole Simmons, “With touchscreen machines, votes are
recorded as a chunk of computer code that the voter cannot view. This
leaves the door open for error or fraud.”
academic studies and independent security reports over the past year
warn that elections on these machines are at high risk of being
compromised, either unintentionally or by deliberate, malicious design.
All touchscreens used in the U.S. have proven vulnerable to calibration problems; e.g., “vote flipping.” See the article “All Four Major E-Voting Machines Flip Votes in Early Voting” by Warren Stewart of VoteTrust USA.
Disabled
voters have successfully used paper-ballot markers like the Automark
(used in almost a third of Iowa's polling places) without trusting to glitch-prone touchscreens.
The paper that the printer rolls use is low-quality, flimsy paper; the roll is commonly called a “toilet-paper roll.”
Legislation
being introduced this week by U.S. Representative Rush Holt will
establish strict new standards for the paper rolls, which no current
touchscreen system meets. This will strongly favor paper ballots, with
assistive marking devices for disabled voters.
Rep. Holt's bill will provide $300 million to states and counties to upgrade to the new standards.
Iowa should not find itself in the position of catching up to Florida.
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