Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the subject at the heart our democracy, voter confidence. What is the central act, Mr. Speaker, of our democracy? It is the vote. For that to work, we must have confidence. In fact, for our government to work, we must have the confidence of the citizens. This is a self-governed country, and it only works if we believe it does. It only works if we maintain faith in the system.

Now, obviously, that has a lot to do with how elected officials behave today, it has a lot to do with how the citizens feel that their money is spent, it has a lot to do with how much we elected officials stay in touch with the people.

But it also has to do with the process of voting, itself; and in recent efforts to strengthen our voting procedures, particularly following the problems that became apparent in the 2000 election, a number of changes have been made that might actually serve to reduce voter confidence.

In November of this year, it is expected that 50 million votes, almost one-third of the votes that are likely to be cast in this country, will be cast on machines, touch screen, electronic machines, what are known as direct recording electronic voting machines, or DREs; and these 50 million votes will be unauditable. If we do not pass legislation requiring a voter-verified audit for each vote at the time each voter votes, we may as well outlaw recounts.

Now, I ask my colleagues if they know any candidate for office who would want to run without the possibility of a recount if there were questions about the election. If we do not take legislative action, we might as well outlaw recounts in Federal elections. Somewhere along the way, we allowed the vote count to become privatized, and we should act now to undo that.

In July of last year, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelly released a report of a touch screen task force. It was comprised of computer scientists, election officials, representatives from the Secretary of State's office, election reform groups, and election officials. This task force said, ``There needs to be voter verification imposed by a date certain.''

By voter verification, what they meant was a procedure, a mechanism, so that each time a voter goes into the booth that that voter can verify that his or her intentions are correctly recorded, in other words, that the vote cast is the same as the vote recorded.

Now, at the same time that the Secretary of State of California was releasing this task force report, computer scientists reviewed the source code used by one of this country's major voting machines; and their analysis, which is commonly referred to as the ``Johns Hopkins Report,'' found that ``this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We identified several problems, including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats and poor software development processes. We show that voters without any insider privileges can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanism within the voting terminal software. Further, we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered and executed without access to a source code. We conclude that this voting system,'' and now this is one of the most common voting systems in America, ``that this voting system is unsuitable for use in a general election.''

Well, there are a lot of technical computer science terms there, but what they mean is the software is unreliable, that the machines may not record the votes the way the voters intended them to be recorded, either through inadvertent error or through malicious software hacking.

The State of Maryland commissioned a third-party review of their electronic voting machines. This review was conducted by Science Applications International Corporation, SAIC, last summer. A version of that report was released and it said: ``This risk assessment has identified several high-risk vulnerabilities in the implementation of the managerial, operational, and technical controls for the voting system. If these risks are exploited, significant impact could occur on the accuracy, integrity, and availability of election results. The system is at high risk of compromise.''

Again, this is written in technical terms, but it says quite simply, your vote may not be counted.

Now, even if great pains have been taken to get rid of the bugs in the software and the systems are guarded so hackers do not get to them, we still cannot be certain, we still cannot be certain that the system works to record the voters' intentions accurately.

Now, some election officials say, well, we have been using these electronic machines for several years now and we have never had a problem, to which I say, Mr. Speaker, how do you know? If the system has an obvious breakdown, then you know it does not work. But if it appears to be recording votes, you cannot know, fundamentally cannot know whether it does work.

That is why it is necessary that there be a parallel audit trail, so that each voter owns the verification. Not some discount company that vouches for its machine, not even the election officials of the State, but the voter herself or himself can verify that the vote that is recorded is the vote that was intended.

Maryland commissioned yet another study, because there was continuing uncertainty following the really troubling results of that first study. This study, prepared by another organization, was released in January of this year. It was based on what they called a ``red team exercise,'' a deliberate attempt to compromise the system, to see how easily they could be compromised.

That reported said: ``The State of Maryland election system, comprising technical, operation and procedural components, as configured, contains considerable security risks that can cause moderate to severe disruption in an election.''

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the central act, the centerpiece of our democracy, voting. What could be more important?

Well, there is a way to deal with this problem. It is technologically and practically feasible. In fact, it is easy to give each voter the control of the verification, to give each voter the assurance, the confidence, that his or her vote has been recorded the way she or he intended.

I have introduced the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act. I introduced this about a year ago, working with a number of computer scientists and election officials and others, seeking input from civil rights groups and public interest groups and groups of citizens with physical disabilities; and we crafted language that would solve this security problem.

Quite simply, my legislation would require that all voting systems produce a voter-verified paper record for use in manual audits. So you go into the booth, if there is an electronic machine, one of these DRE touch-screen machines, for example. You would vote. Before you submit the vote, after you have chosen the candidates and selected your position on the referenda and so forth, the machine would produce a parallel audited record, a paper account of your vote.

One can look at it and say, yep, that is my vote. Or if it is not, one can declare it a spoiled ballot and have the election officials reset the machine and vote again, or, vote once and the other ballot is disposed of.

The legislation would not only require a voter-verified paper record for each voter at the time of voting, it would ban the use of undisclosed software and wireless communication devices in voting systems. It would require that all voting systems meet these requirements in time for the general election of this year, November 2004. It would require that electronic voting systems be provided for persons with physical disabilities 1 year earlier than is provided under the current versions of the law.

My legislation would also require mandatory surprise recounts in one- half of 1 percent of all jurisdictions so that the voters, each voter, can have assurance that the system is working. This will go a long way toward removing one of the areas of uncertainty.

I think any of us, when we hold town meetings or just walking around the

streets of our towns, we encounter people who say, ``I do not vote. My vote does not count.'' I spend a lot of time arguing with people like that. As someone who won an election by a razor-thin margin once, I can assure them that every vote does count.

But more and more I hear people saying, my vote will not be counted. And that is a very troubling sign. If people do not go to the polls for whatever reason, it is a loss to democracy. It is a tragedy for our country. And we dare not let them have the excuse that their vote will not be counted because the machine will malfunction, because there are bugs in the software, or because the software has been tampered with.

The centerpiece of our democracy, that is what we are talking about.

And I am pleased to be joined in this discussion by two people who have given a great deal of thought to this issue. I am joined by my friend the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall) who served as attorney general in New Mexico before coming here to the House of Representatives. And he understands how important it is that we maintain the confidence of citizens in their government and in the process of government. And he understands how we can do that.

I would be pleased to yield to my colleague from New Mexico.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, it does not provide enough security. This past Tuesday, a day ago, I voted in the school board elections in my home district. For the first time our county, Mercer County, New Jersey, used electronic touch screen machines, the so- called DRE, one brand of the DRE machines.

As I expected, they were clear, easy to use, accessible. I think they would be good for people with physical disabilities, better probably than the old lever machines. And they were, as I expected, totally unverifiable. Now, why do I say that? Because the manufacturers will say, oh, we have batteries in there so if the power fails, they will not crash. Of course, there are a lot of computer engineers who promise that their software will not crash. But the manufacturers say, well, we store the votes in two different memory locations so there is redundancy.

With the electronic machines there is no way after the polls close that you can go back and determine what was the intention of each voter because there is this fundamental principle of secrecy. One's ballot must be kept secret. They cannot go back and say, you, Mr. Udall, voter number 23 today, voted for candidate A in this election and candidate C in that election.

So it is fundamentally different from your ATM machine, your cash machine at the bank or from other electronics that you work with because at the end of the month, with your bank, you have got either your checks or photocopies of your checks, and the bank tells you how much they think you have, and you tell them how much you think you have, and you get together on it.

With a secret ballot one cannot do that. They cannot tell someone how they voted. They cannot know how someone voted. So there is necessarily a gap between the casting of the vote and the recording of the vote. It is fundamental to these machines. One cannot get around it. We cannot build redundancy in there because there is a gap filled with software between the casting of the vote and the recording of the vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for those stirring words that speak to democracy. I cannot emphasize strongly enough what we are talking about here. This is not an exercise in computer science. It is not a game of political gotcha. It is not a partisan matter. It is not antitechnology. It is simply an effort to see that voters believe that they own their government, that they own their vote, that the sanctity of their vote is preserved.

Now, someone who has studied this both theoretically and practically is the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), who has looked at this with the eyes and the mind of a political scientist, but also as someone who has had his share of close elections and

knows what it would mean if we had elections all across the country without the possibility of a recount.

I am pleased to yield to my friend from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

These electronic machines are now in fairly common use around the country, and so we are beginning to get a number of stories of questionable behavior or real horror stories. There are cases where it appears that the electronic machines have actually counted backwards as the evening has gone along. There are other cases where, well, in one election recently, ironically in the State of Florida, there was a special election for a State office, several candidates on the ballot in a couple of counties. Some thousands of voters turned out for this single election. There was only one election on the ballot, and 137 voters who showed up, signed in and went into the voting booth evidently did not vote. Their votes were not recorded.

In other elections there are suspicious results where all of the candidates, all of the winning candidates got exactly the same vote total numbering in the thousands. So there are a number of instances where there are questionable results, and the point is you will never know was there something wrong because you cannot go back and audit them. There is no audit. There is no recount possible.

So I am afraid that anytime there is a close election from now on, unless we have this parallel voter-verified audit trail, there will be a cloud hanging over every close election and the loser and the loser's supporters will wonders if they have been cheated out of the election by some sort or error or, at worse, by hacking, by theft, by fraud. And that cloud cannot be dispelled.

Would it not be ironic.

Let me refer to what a couple of States are doing, partly because Congress has been slow to address this problem. My bill has been sitting in committee for a year now. Some States have acted on their own. I have mentioned the studies that were undertaken in California and the Secretary of State of California has decided to act and has declared that in the future the California machines must have a voter- verified paper trail.

In past months, the Secretary of State of Nevada, Dean Heller, announced his decision to buy touch screen voting machines for all of Nevada's counties, and he also announced a mandated paper ballot be created through the use of a voter-verifiable record in all new DRE machines purchased in the State of Nevada in time for the 2004 general election. Said the Secretary of State, ``I did so because the voters of this State overwhelmingly supported the inclusion of a paper trail to protect the integrity of our election.'' Maybe it is time for the voters to let their county officials know how important a voter- verifiable receipt printer is to them.

Now, it would make sense for Federal elections that this be handled on a national level and not count on each county and each State to try to protect the integrity of the system for the voters. As the Secretary of State of New Hampshire wrote, ``People in other States talk about the unbelievable burden of recounts. They do not realize the costs of restoring legitimacy is far greater than the costs of maintaining it.''

He gets it. He understands that we have to have an election system that is recognized as legitimate, that allows recounts, that gives voters confidence. New Hampshire uses paper ballots in 100 percent of its precincts; 55 percent of New Hampshire precincts use an optical scan system where you fill in a circle or a box next to the candidate, and then an optical scanner or machine will count those ballots. But you have the record that the voter has marked herself or himself so that provides a voter-verification paper trail. That is 55 percent of their precincts and 45 percent use paper and nothing else. And New Hampshire's system for a number of years now has been highly successful, in the words of the Secretary of State, and ``successful in promoting voter confidence and reliability.''

In fact, to make the pointed that this is not a partisan matter, should not or need not be a partisan matter, I have here a resolution passed by the New Hampshire State Republican convention in 1988 no less. So it is not only not partisan; it is not all that new. They said, ``Whereas, the State of New Hampshire has computerized voting equipment that does not have the ability to recount manually, does not have the ability to recount at all, uses secrecy of internal procedures as a primary security strategy, does not give the voter the ability to ensure the computer has voted as instructed, now therefore, it be resolved,'' etc., etc.,

``computerized voting equipment must either produce a manually recountable ballot for the voter's inspection prior to electronically casting the voter's ballot or use as its input a ballot which can be used in a manual recount.''

The Republican Party said, we must have a voter-verified paper trail.

I am pleased now that we are joined by our colleague, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), who has given a great deal of thought and energy to this question. I yield to my colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman and since she speaks about appropriations, it is worth pointing out that the Help America Vote Act, which was passed to bring voting up-to-date and to remove uncertainties, dimpled chads, pregnant chads, hanging chads, butterfly ballots and all that and to provide greater access for people with physical disabilities, to provide greater voting rights for minorities, that bill is a very important step, but it is terribly underfunded. The appropriations have not come close to matching what the authors of that bill said was necessary.

But to the other point that my friend from Ohio raised where in Ohio if an election is very close there must be a recount, let me speak from personal experience.

A few years ago, I was involved in a close election. My opponent asked for a recount. In one of the five counties in my District, there were then in use electronic voting machines. No surprise, several weeks after the election, when the judge asked for a recount, those machines gave exactly the same numbers that they gave 5 minutes after the polls closed. They call that a recount but it is meaningless. If there was an error, if the voter's intention was not properly recorded, no one will ever know. Each time you interrogate the computer, it will give you the same answer. I do not call that a recount because you are not testing against the voters' intentions.

Let me quickly just read a few comments from the press around the country. The New York Times: ``Even a cursory look at the behavior of the major voting machine companies reveals systematic flouting of the rules. Software was modified without government oversight; machine components were replaced without being rechecked. And here's the crucial point: even if there are strong reasons to suspect that electronic machines miscounted votes, nothing can be done about it. There is no paper trail; there is nothing to recount.''

Anchorage, Alaska: ``Alaska law,'' and by extension the Federal law, ``should require electronic voting machines to produce a paper record of each vote.''

Bangor, Maine: ``Paperless voting machines and those that transmit results over the Internet are vulnerable to glitches and manipulation by hackers. Yet election officials in many States are tempted by a slick technology.''

Asbury Park Press: ``There's no good reason for Congress to delay mandating that electronic machines produce paper records.''

Los Angeles Times: They say, ``Machines, too, can lie.''

Boston Globe: ``It's the computers' turn to mess up elections.''

Newsday says, ``Elections flawed.''

Palm Beach Post, Orlando Sentinel: ``The electronic voting machines are better than dimpled chads but need back-up.''

Eugene, Oregon, The Register-Guard: ``Voters need a record.''

Sarasota Herald Tribune: ``A paper trail would increase faith in elections.''

I could go on. In newspaper after newspaper, in town meeting after town meeting, in letter after letter sent to probably every Member of this House of Representatives, the public is calling for a voter verified paper trail because, I am pleased to say, the American public cares about their votes. They believe their votes are sacred and we should preserve that sanctity.

Someone who can speak with authority about this, about the importance of the franchise, how important it is that we extend the vote to all eligible voters and we make it as easy as possible for them to vote thoughtfully and that we ensure the integrity of those votes is the gentlewoman from the great State of Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown), which, I am sorry to say, the State has become the poster child of voting irregularities, but that is just because the vote was close in Florida. If it had been close in other States, we would have found voting irregularities in other States, too.

We have to do everything we can in every State to restore the sanctity of the vote, the integrity of the vote, the reliability of the vote, and with that, I would be pleased to yield to my friend, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for those remarks.

Let me again quote from Anthony Stevens, the Assistant Secretary of State of New Hampshire: The cost of restoring legitimacy is far greater than the cost of maintaining it. When there is an error in the election or when there is uncertainty that there might be an error in the election, it hurts democracy. The winner is compromised; the loser is compromised. Democracy is compromised.

So the fact that there is so much uncertainty about what happened in Florida three-and-a-half years ago is certainly no cause for celebration by the Republicans that they won because there is a cloud hanging over our democracy, and it cannot be resolved.

The HAVA Act, the Help America Vote Act, does take care of some of the problems that my colleague from Florida raised. A voter now can demand a provisional ballot. If when you show up at the polls you are told, well, we cannot find your name on the registration list, you can vote provisionally. You must be allowed to vote provisionally under the Help America Vote Act.

And then later they will determine whether that ballot is good. They will not turn you away.

It also increases accessibility, it increases compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act, it strengthens the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it provides for a centralized database in each State of registered voters, and it helps replace the old machines.

That is right.

Mr. Speaker, there is one more point I want to make quickly before I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Certainly I will continue to yield to the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to working with the gentleman from North Carolina also.

Each of these pieces of legislation deals with one aspect of the problem. One of the lessons of the election of 2000 was that many millions of Americans learned how complicated the voting question is. But we certainly can take care of these two matters in a straightforward way.

Again, my legislation would require that all voting systems produce a voter-verified paper record for use in manual audits. It would ban the use of undisclosed software. It would require that all voting systems meet these requirements, a voter verification, in time for their November 2004 election, this year. It requires that electronic voting systems be provided for persons with disabilities earlier than under the Help America Vote Act, and it would require mandatory surprise recounts in one-half of 1 percent of all jurisdictions.

I think that would go a long way. Now, some of my colleagues here on the floor say, oh, that is not necessary, let us let HAVA work. I tell you one way we can let HAVA work. Each State has submitted to the Election Assistance Commission a plan of how it will comply with HAVA. That has been published in the Federal Register. Public comments on those State plans are due by May 8, and members of the public are invited to comment to the Election Assistance Commission.

That is one way that the process will work. Because ultimately it is the public, not the 435 of us here, who own this democracy and who ultimately must ensure that it works as it should.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may

have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on the subject of this special order.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be joined this evening by my colleague the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) and my colleague the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown).

Let me begin with a question. On Election Day, how will you know if your vote is properly counted? In many precincts, in many States around this country, the answer is you will not. Imagine, it is election day and you enter your polling place to cast your vote on a brand new electronic touch-screen voting machine. The screen is large; it is well lit; it is accessible if you have physical disabilities. Your choices are clearly spelled out before you. In fact, it looks as easy to use as the ATM at your bank. You breathe a sigh of relief that you no longer have to figure out a complicated butterfly ballot. It seems more modern than the old lever machines.

So you make your choice and you touch the submit button and cast your vote. The screen says your vote has been counted. You exit the polling place with a sense of satisfaction, and then you begin to wonder. How do I know if the machine actually recorded my vote the way I intended? The fact is you do not. You have to trust the software in the machine to be error free.

After the 2000 election, we in Congress recognized that we had to act to restore the integrity and reliability of our electoral system by making dimpled chads and other voting irregularities things of the past. Last October, we passed the Help America Vote Act, known as HAVA. It is groundbreaking election reform legislation that is currently helping States throughout the country replace antiquated and unreliable punch cards and other machines.

However, HAVA is having an unintended consequence. HAVA has done some good things. It is giving people with disabilities access, access that they have been denied for years. In fact, they have always been denied. HAVA is doing some great things, but it is leading a headlong rush by States and localities to purchase computer voting systems that suffer from a serious flaw. All models, even the most convenient and accessible, have the problem that once the voter touches the button, the voter has no way of knowing whether the vote has been counted as the voter intended. No one will ever know. It is a secret ballot and must be secret.

This uncertainty, this lack of confidence can be disastrous to voter confidence and can prevent an accurate recount and can be a step on the way to the undoing of our democracy. I am not an anti-technology Luddite. I am a physicist. I am something of a techie. I see real advantages in these electronic machines.

There are several important advantages such as their accessibility if you have physical disabilities. Their speed and efficiency, so that the results will be communicated to the county clerk quickly. They are probably more reliable than the county clerk. I certainly had an experience with the clerk in my county when she awarded one precinct to my opponent by a margin of 9,000 votes when there were not 9,000 people who lived in that precinct. It was a simple pencil and paper clerical area. The electronic machines will do away with that, but there is one fundamental problem. They are inherently unverifiable.

To again make the point that this is not the concern of an anti- technology Luddite, I would say that hundreds of nationally renowned computer scientists have raised a cry of alarm, saying that unless there is an independent verification method to safeguard the accuracy and the integrity of the voting process there will be, might not might be, these computer scientists say there will be problems. There might be accidental software errors. There might be, God forbid, malicious hacking, and if there are concerns, if the voter is uncertain, if the candidate is uncertain whether the votes have been recorded the way they were cast, a recount is meaningless. The computer that has a faulty tally 2 minutes after the polls closed will have the same faulty tally a day later when the recount is held or the next month when the judge opens it up. If there are errors, they will go unnoticed and unknown.

The history of progress in our system of self-government here in America is in many ways a history of increasing the franchise, extending the right to vote and the ability to vote, increasing accessibility and reliability of the process of voting, but we still have some problems. We see declining voter turnout, and we have all heard, my colleagues here from Ohio I am sure have heard, constituents say, well, my vote does not count. Some people when they say that mean that special interests dominate the process and overwhelm my vote in secret back room deals. And we all work hard to see that that concern is removed, but they often mean something else when they say my vote does not count. They mean, literally, my vote does not count, my vote will not be counted.

The level of concern around the country is astounding. The Internet is burning up with back and forth chat of concerns about our voting process, and the loss of confidence in the process leads to a loss of failure to vote, leads to a cheapening and eventual breakdown of our democracy.

Every voter who stays home, whether it is because the voting places are physically inaccessible to them or because of a lack of trust in the voting process is a loss to democracy. We must find, we must find a way to keep the voter directly connected to the verification process so the voter knows that her vote or his vote is the vote that is counted.

It is not good enough to give them reassurance that the manufacturer says the machine works fine. Without taking steps to return the verification to the voter and to restore trust in the process, we face a crisis, pure and simple.

I have with me someone who has paid close attention to the electoral process. My colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), was the Secretary of State of Ohio, and one of his responsibilities, as I believe, was to ensure the accuracy and the reliability of the voting system. And I think he understands, as well as anyone, the potential crisis we face or maybe it is not even potential anymore. I would be pleased to yield to my friend from Ohio (Mr. Brown).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his insight, and he makes this important distinction about having confidence in the way the votes are cast and having confidence in the way the votes are counted, and it is not necessarily the same thing. It is the electronics inside the machine that connects those two, and it is that gap which makes them inherently unverifiable.

I have legislation that would, I believe, overcome this shortcoming. But before I talk about the details, and I will not go through all the details, but before I outline that legislation, I would be pleased to yield to my friend, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), who has deep and strong concerns about this.

So that the voter can vote. If there is any question about eligibility or other questions about the vote, those will be settled later and the voter will be able to cast the vote on election day. That is what the gentlewoman means, I believe, by no-fault voting.

The appointments have been made, but the other body has not acted and the commission does not yet exist.

I thank the gentlewoman, and I think her insertions in the Record will be very useful to people. I thank her for her insightful comments.

I would make the point that even though HAVA does not require action immediately, the sooner we implement HAVA, the better. There are many people with physical disabilities who have been denied the privilege and the satisfaction of voting in person and in private. HAVA would correct that. But we must not let HAVA lead us to unverifiable voting. That is why I am proposing legislation that would, I think, correct this problem. It would require that all voting systems produce a paper record, an audit trail that is verified by the voter. In other words, each voter will see and verify a paper record of the vote. That will allow manual audits. It will mean that recounts actually mean something. This would be the vote of record. It would be kept safely with the election records for recounts.

My legislation would do some other things such as banning undisclosed software and would accelerate the date by which the provisions for people with disabilities would have to be met. But the fundamental point I wanted to make is that voting should not be an act of faith as my colleagues have said. It should be an act of record. It is also important to make the point that what I am talking about here is nonpartisan. It is preserving the sanctity of the ballot. This is not a Republican matter or a Democratic matter. It is fundamental to the American system.

I am sorry to say that the Internet is buzzing with conspiracy theories. In other words, voters are afraid that something is afoot. It was reported in this week's Newsweek by Steven Levy that suspicions, as he says, run even higher when people learn that some of those in charge of the voting technology, the manufacturers of the voting machines, are themselves partisan. The CEO of a major company is a major fund-raiser for the Presidential reelection campaign. He recently said that he was ``committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the President next year.'' According to this article, he later clarified that he was not talking about rigging the machines.

Whew. That is actually Mr. Levy's expression. Whew.

By the proposal that I have, the legislative proposal I have, the printout would be at the voting machine at the time that the voter votes, available for the voter's inspection and verification. And it would go into a secure lockbox. If there is a need for a recount, the paper ballots would be tallied. It may not be a perfect system, but it is a way to assure the voters that the process is honest.

It is troubling that this is not getting as much attention here in this body as it should. An article appeared in the New Zealand Herald a few days ago. The article begins, ``The possibility of flaws in the electoral process is not something that gets discussed much in the United States Congress. The attitude seems to be, we are the greatest democracy in the world, so the system must be fair.''

That is not good enough. We are a great country because we constantly try to do better, because we constantly try to increase the franchise, increase accessibility to democracy, increase the reliability of the process. That is what we need to do. Yet from all over the country, I get e-mails. For instance, from Georgia: ``If we can't verify our elections, then we can't verify our freedom.''

From Idaho someone writes: ``Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.''

From Michigan: ``The act of voting is the most essential issue. This issue is the most essential issue our representatives will vote on and they should be judged accordingly.''

From North Carolina: ``A paper trail is the only reasonable solution to any computer-mediated transaction. As a corporate system security analyst, I find the electronic devices as they now stand without this verifiable backup simply irresponsible.''

From North Dakota: ``There is no confidence nor integrity without it.''

From Ohio: ``I work with computers every day. We need to check that what goes in is what comes out.''

From Oregon: ``Without this, I will no longer view this country as a democracy.''

From Tennessee: ``If there is no accountability in election, there is no reason to vote and we descend into anarchy.''

From Wisconsin: ``If voters perceive,'' the key word here is perceive, ``that their votes are being miscounted and are meaningless, they will simply stop voting.''

That gives you some sense of the seriousness that voters assign to this issue. It is very important. This body should turn its attention to restoring the voters' trust in every way we can. One important way we can do that is by making sure that they have confidence in the process that makes this democracy work, the process of voting and then, of course, the process by which we fulfill the trust that they place in us.

As I have talked about this with people, I have run into a number of opinions. I was talking with an election official from another State who said, Well, we've had these electronic machines for several years now and we've had no problems. To which I said, How do you know?

He did not have an answer. We have to help him get that answer.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank the gentleman for holding this meeting today to discuss the elections and how we are going to ensure that we have a fair election in 2004 and how we are going to make sure that people in America get a chance to vote but also that their votes will count, but I do have to correct my colleague on just one thing because Florida is not just known in the country, it is known throughout the world, because of this last election.

I just returned from Eastern Europe and I tell you, anytime I mentioned that I am from Florida, there is a sympathy in the look that I receive because they wonder how in the world that South Africa could get it right and we could not get it right in the great State of Florida.

The correction I want to make is that the election in Florida was not close. It was not close at all. Statewide, over 150,000 votes were thrown out, but I want to talk to you about what was very up close and personal for me in that in my District, in the 3rd Congressional District of Florida, in Duval County alone, in precinct 7, 8, 9 and 10, over 27,000 votes were thrown out, 27,000.

I have here on my right the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price) who came to Duval County at a hearing where all the problems that Florida experienced was discussed and the depth of the seriousness of throwing out 27,000 votes. Why were they thrown out? Because they had old machines, and the machines, when you vote, they just spit the ballot out, and we never counted them. To this day, 27,000 ballots were not counted.

The sad part about it is that the supervisor of elections did not inform us. By law, you can ask for a recount in 48 hours. They did not even tell us until at least four days after the election that they had thrown them out. By the way, I was watching television. The supervisor of elections came on television, and the reporters were asking him how many votes were thrown out in Duval County. He said, oh, 27,000. I mean, 27,000. So we have to make sure that that never happens again nowhere in the United States.

When I travel around the world and I go to places like Haiti, they did not have 27,000 votes thrown out. When I go to Africa and monitor their elections, I mean if we are going to be the voice of freedom, it starts with the election.

Let me just say that I supported the initiative on the Help America Vote Act that was passed back in 2002, and I thought it was particularly important that the law provides money to help States replace and update their old and outdated voting machines. Now we can see why this is so important because of what happened in Florida, just during the last primary.

During the primary even though voter turnout was light, serious problems occurred. For example, voters were incorrectly given computer cards that let them vote only on local issues and not on the issue that they came to vote for, the presidential primary. So the fact is that in many counties, the machines did not work, and even the experts, the computer scientists, warned that votes and entire elections, in fact, could be stolen by rigging the codes that run the machines, and the only defense against this is a paper trail, in every vote count, so that a paper ballot could be counted if the machines tallies are brought into question.

To me, after what happened in 2000, I think of all places, Florida definitely needs a paper trail. We need a paper trail. Nothing has changed in Florida. We still have the same governor. Jeb Bush is the governor of Florida, and we still have a system in place where the governor paid a firm out of Texas $4 million to verify felons. Well, it did not matter whether you were a felon or not. If your name was James Brown or

Corrine Brown, we just took all of the similar names out of the system, and you were not even notified so that you could correct it before the election.

So when you went to the supervisor of elections office, where you have been going for the past 30 years, you were told that you could not vote because you were a felon and you had no recourse. We had nothing in place that you could cast your ballot and later we could rectify it, and so all of those people, thousands, was turned away on election day.

About three weeks later, they got a letter from the supervisor of their elections saying, whoops, we made a mistake, and we in this Congress and we in this country are still suffering from that mistake, and we have to be committed that what happened in the 2000 election will never happen again in this country. We have to make sure that we put the credibility back for the American people and for the world because the world looks at us as a beacon of light, of hope, and yet they wonder why we cannot get it right in the United States. Maybe the reason why we cannot get it right is because we do not want to get it right.

I enjoy a good campaign, but the end result is we have got to make sure that when the American people go to the polls in November that they can vote, that their vote will count and there is verification of the vote.

I thank the gentleman very much for having this opportunity to talk to the American people about a system that is still broke, and if we do not put the money, the oversight and the security into the system, then shame on us.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for just one second, he is absolutely right, the provisional ballot is in place. But to this point you have no assurance that they are going to count it.

So that is a major problem.

If the gentleman will allow me one other quick comment.

The other thing is that the handicapped citizens sued Duvall County pertaining to access to the election, making sure that they have an opportunity to vote in private, and they won. So I want to submit this for the Record for the membership to review.

[From the New York Times, Mar. 14, 2004]

Florida as the Next Florida

As Floridians went to the polls last Tuesday, Glenda Hood,

Katherine Harris's successor as secretary of state, assured

the nation that Florida's voting system would not break down

this year the way it did in 2000. Florida now has ``the very

best'' technology available, she declared on CNN. ``And I do

feel that it's a great disservice to create the feeling that

there's a problem when there is not.'' Hours later, results

in Bay County showed that with more than 60 percent of

precincts reporting, Richard Gephardt, who long before had

pulled out of the presidential race, was beating John Kerry

by two to one. ``I'm devastated,'' the county's top election

official said, promising a recount of his county's 19,000

votes.

Four years after Florida made a mockery of American

elections, there is every reason to believe it could happen

again. This time, the problems will most likely be with the

electronic voting that has replaced chad-producing punch

cards. Some counties, including Bay County, use paper ballots

that are fed into an optical scanner, so a recount is

possible if there are questions. But 15 Florida counties,

including Palm Beach, home of the infamous ``butterfly

ballot,'' have adopted touch-screen machines that do not

produce a paper record. If anything goes wrong in these

counties in November, we will be in bad shape.

Florida's official line is that its machines are so

carefully tested, nothing can go wrong. But things already

have gone wrong. In a January election in Palm Beach and

Broward Counties, the victory margin was 12 votes, but the

machines recorded more than 130 blank ballots. It is simply

not believable that 130 people showed up to cast a nonvote,

in an election with only one race on the ballot. The runner-

up wanted a recount, but since the machines do not produce a

paper record, there was nothing to recount.

In 2002, in the primary race for governor between Janet

Reno and Bill McBride, electronic voting problems were so

widespread they cast doubt on the outcome. Many Miami-Dade

County votes were not counted on election night because

machines were shut down improperly. One precinct with over

1,000 eligible voters recorded no votes, despite a 33 percent

turnout statewide. Election workers spent days hunting for

lost votes, while Floridians waited, in an uncomfortable

replay of 2000, to see whether Mr. McBride's victory margin,

which had dwindled to less than 10,000, would hold up.

This past Tuesday, even though turnout was minimal, there

were problems. Voters were wrongly given computer cards that

let them vote only on local issues, not in the presidential

primary. Machines did not work. And there were, no doubt,

other mishaps that did not come to light because of the

stunning lack of transparency around voting in the state.

When a Times editorial writer dropped in on one Palm Beach

precinct where there were reports of malfunctioning machines,

county officials called the police to remove him.

The biggest danger of electronic voting, however, cannot be

seen from the outside. Computer scientists warn that votes,

and whole elections, can be stolen by rigging the code that

runs the machines. The only defense is a paper record of

every vote cast, a ``voter-verified paper trail,'' which can

be counted if the machines' tallies are suspect. Given its

history, Florida should be a leader in requiring paper

trails. But election officials, including Theresa LePore, the

Palm Beach County elections supervisor who was responsible

for the butterfly ballot, have refused to put them in place.

Last week, Representative Robert Wexler, a Florida

Democrat, filed a federal lawsuit to require paper trails. He

relies on the Supreme Court's holding in Bush v. Gore that

equal protection requires states to use comparable recount

methods from county to country. Florida law currently

requires a hand recount in close races. That is possible in

most counties, but the 15 that use electronic voting machines

do not produce paper records that can be recounted. Under the

logic of Bush v. Gore, Representative Wexler is right.

After the 2000 mess, Americans were assured they would not

have to live through such a flawed election again. But

Florida has put in place a system, electronic voting without

a paper trail, that threatens once more to produce an outcome

that cannot be trusted. There is still time before the

November vote to put printers in place in the 15 Florida

counties that use touch screens. As we learned four years

ago, once the election has been held on bad equipment, it is

too late to make it right.

That is right.

And, Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from New Jersey will continue to yield for just 30 seconds.

Let me just mention that there are only five States now that will not allow ex-felons to vote. And that is a bigger issue. Because once someone pays their dues and serves their time, you want them to be productive citizens. And part of being a productive citizen is participating in the voting process. So that is something that we need to take a look at.

This is something that has been held over from the old Jim Crow days.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) for his outstanding national leadership for his question of the integrity of our vote and wish to join him in support of H.R. 2239, his measure to instill voter confidence and increased accessibility of 2003 by requiring a voter-verified permanent record or hard copy under title III of the Help America Vote Act that we passed back on October 29, 2002.

The bill does need perfection, and it is to the gentleman from New Jersey's (Mr. Holt) great credit that over 132 Members of this House already signed on as co-sponsors of this measure.

It is a pleasure to join the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall), the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price) here this evening, and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown) in supporting this measure.

Let me just say that the goals of the original act were to provide funds for new voting equipment and training and that the Election Assistance Commission that was established as a national clearing house for Federal elections was expected to do many things that they have not done to date, simply because they were appointed too late. In fact, a year late. They were not confirmed in their position until December 9 of last year. And the first public meeting of the commission was just about one month ago on March 23. Therefore, when counties in our congressional district looked to the Federal Government for information about secure voting systems, and which electronic voting devices can really be trusted, guess what? There is no advice, because the commission has not completed its work. And in fact as we meet here today, the public comment period on the various State election plans that have been submitted to the Federal Register for comment which will end on May 8 allow for the States to self-certify. Those comments are just given back to the Secretaries of the various States and then Federal money begins to kick in, $2.3 billion for election training, $650 million for equipment; but the point is that there are not Federal standards by which we can judge this equipment. This has never happened before across our Nation.

There are many delays associated with those appointments to the commission, and several deadlines in HAVA have already been missed in that act. I will submit those for the record tonight. It is important to say over two dozen States have requested and granted a waiver for compliance with the HAVA voting equipment requirements until the first election after January 1, 2006.

I would say to many elections officials across this country and across my own State of Ohio who have asked me, go to the act. We can provide this to you. You do not have to buy this equipment this year if you do not believe it is secure. If you do not believe the smart cards are trust worthy, you do not have to buy those machines under the act that we passed here. There are no Federal standards in place yet so you have no guidelines. So why make decisions prematurely?

We want to make sure that that equipment works once you bring it on line, and you have to think about the long-term costs of the maintenance of the electronic equipment. Right now the act does not provide for storage costs at a certain humidity, which many of those electronic systems do require. You have to also think about the training of the booth workers who will be working this year. The training money has not gone out yet. Who will do the training? What kind of training? Will we be sufficiently trained on this new equipment by November or should you use your traditional system that has been in place through this year and then move the HAVA legislation and then the equipment and so forth on board for elections after January 2006?

I just wanted to mention the gentleman from New Jersey's (Mr. Holt) tremendous work in this area, specifically as regards the paper trails and how you recount from a device that sends its votes into cyberspace.

We currently have several places in the country where elections have been conducted on this equipment and the votes cannot be recounted because the votes are in space. There is no paper record. There is nothing in the machine you can go back to. It only repeats what it did before. There is no paper record. And I totally support your efforts to try to get an auditable, verifiable paper trail. With all of the money we are spending, well over a billion dollars in this country, why can we not get it right the first time and make sure that whatever is necessary to provide that machine with intelligence so we can audit that trail is available? In the State of Ohio, I will end and just say, we have a State requirement that if an election is within one half of 1 percent, we must recount. It is Ohio's statute. We must do this. If we have votes in cyberspace, there is no way that we can accomplish this state-mandated test.

So I want to thank the gentleman for taking on this major effort. And believe me, you have my support in the Committee on Appropriations and in any other way to try to get these machines to function the right way and to get our poll workers the proper training before the election in which any of this equipment is brought on line.

Rush Holt has introduced H.R. 2239, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003, to require a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy under title III of the Help America Vote Act. The bill now has 132 cosponsors. Congressman Holt will speak more about his bill later.

HAVA was signed into law on October 29, 2002. Its goals were to provide new voting equipment in those communities where it is needed and wanted; to provide training programs for election workers and voter education programs for the public; and to establish an Election Assistance Commission to serve as a national clearinghouse and resource for the administration of Federal elections.

Under the Act, the four Commissioners were to be appointed by February 26, 2003. Their nominations were not even sent to the Senate until October 3, 2003, and they were not confirmed until December 9, 2003. The first public meeting of the Commission was just about 1 month ago, on March 23rd. As we meet here, the public comment period on State Election Plans is underway. At the conclusion of this period, State Election Plans can be self-certified by the States and they will begin to receive more than $2.3 billion for election training and assistance, in addition to the $650 million that has already been put out to the states.

Due to the delays in the appointment of the commission, several deadlines specified in HAVA have already been missed:

Recommendations and voluntary guidance on Section 302 provisional voting requirements (October 1, 2003);

Recommendations and voluntary guidance on Section 303 provisions on computerized statewide voter registration list requirements and mail registration requirements (October 1, 2003);

Human Factors Report to the President and Congress (October 29, 2003);

EAC adopts voluntary guidance recommendations relating to Section 301 Voting Systems Standards Requirements (January 1, 2004);

First Annual EAC report to Congress (January 31, 2004);

A report and recommendations to the President and Congress for facilitating military and overseas voting.

Additionally, 24 states have requested and been granted a waiver for compliance with HAVA voting equipment requirements until the first Federal election after January 1, 2006.

Testing by NIST on voting machines, and its obligation to help develop tough standards for this new equipment, was suspended for 2 months this year because of the lack of federal money. The Commission is thankful that NIST has been able to identify $375,000 to help the Technical Guidance Development Committee get underway. But no recommendations are expected for another 9 months, while the Commissioners themselves recognize that State and local election authorities are looking for federal guidelines to help them develop their own standards.

Over the course of the past year, there have been many concerns raised regarding the security of new voting equipment. Will there be a paper trail that can be used for recounts? Can the summary data stored on the memory components of equipment provide a source for a recount in which voters can have confidence? Expert opinion is divided, and several

states, including Ohio, California, Maryland and others, are looking into adopting state legislation that will build upon HAVA's minimum requirements.

The Commission itself is scheduled to hold a hearing regarding concerns about election equipment and other start-up issues on May 5th. The Technology Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee, which had planned to hold a hearing on similar concerns on April 28th, has now delayed their hearing until May 12th.

I want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) for his extraordinary leadership on this very, very important piece of legislation that he has introduced, H.R. 2239, taking his great intelligence and experience as a physicist and wedding it to his legislative experience here in the Congress and trying to help our Nation improve on the voting systems that we have, but to do so in a way that every voter will be confident that when they cast their ballot that their vote is really in there, in that machine.

In fact, I begin with that statement because one of the leading election officials in my own district said to me, Congresswoman, I do not have confidence that in what is being done right now that I can answer to the citizens of this county that their vote will be in there. How do they know it's in there? Give me the confidence that I know it's in there. I said, I am supporting Congressman Holt's bill so that we get an auditable paper trail at every precinct.

I would say that in addition to being a U.S. Representative, which I was elected to rather later in life, the very first office I was ever elected to and still hold is precinct committeewoman in my own home precinct. Ohio is unlike some of the other States in the Union, but we value every vote at the precinct level. We count the votes at the precinct level. Under Ohio law when you cast your vote and there is a paper trail currently in every precinct in our county, over 500 of these precincts, the votes in that precinct are counted right there. They are not taken to another location. Both Democrats and Republicans count these votes together, and there are actual documents that they have to handle, physically handle and then tally and then those votes are both sent to the board of elections in a central location, but also posted on the door outside that precinct. Any voter can go and take that tally at the end of the day. We have a very transparent system, one in which our major parties have confidence. Every tally that is done in the voting logs that are assembled in every precinct, they are added up. Sometimes mistakes are made in the precincts in terms of the tallies but then those are caught at the central board of elections, and we try to really assure that the count is as fair as possible. If it is not, if people have any concern, if there is a one-vote margin in an election, you can go back to the paper trail and you can go back and see what was done in every single precinct in the county.

I wanted to say to the gentleman, I think that this verification is so extraordinarily important. What happened in Florida at the moment could not happen in Ohio because in Florida they move their ballots to a counting station. They do not count in every precinct. Speaking as a Buckeye, speaking as an Ohioan, I do not want our rights taken away from us at the precinct level. I also would, if the gentleman will allow me, wish to place in the Record this evening for every election official in this country, at every county in the country, at every precinct, at every board of election, I have found great confusion as to what the Help America Vote Act actually requires and the Federal Election Commission on its Web site has what is required by the Federal law, every single year.

And indeed it is not until January 1, 2006, that every State and jurisdiction is required to comply with the voting systems requirements of the Help America Vote Act that we passed last year. Some people are under the impression that they have to have everything done by next year. They do not. They can get a waiver that they have to file with the Federal Election Commission this coming January. The secretaries of state of our country should have notified counties of this. But I can tell you, as I go out into my Ohio counties, the local boards of election simply do not know this. There is great concern and there is great consternation. I will place this in the Record.

I would also like to say to the gentleman from New Jersey, in addition to his bill which I hope we can pass expeditiously, I would urge our State legislatures to adopt no-fault absentee voting, that if there is any concern next year at any precinct or a doubt about the integrity of that machine, that voters can have an alternate way of casting a vote in that county through no-fault absentee voting or indeed even paper ballots at the same precincts, so that people have confidence that their vote will be counted.

That is what I mean. If I might just take one additional moment of the gentleman and then complete my remarks. One of the reasons I think this is important is when we passed the Help America Vote Act, the Bush administration was to have appointed an election commission that would set Federal standards for the development of the technologies that you know are so critical. They have not done that. In fact, the commission does not even exist, so there are no Federal regulations.

So there are no Federal standards. I can tell the gentleman

that in Ohio our secretary of state displayed five different technologies in our State House. I sent down a computer security team from our region in the State from all of our major universities and said, please assess the machines. These were all people involved in computer security. They came back and reported to me that of the five systems under review in Ohio, not a single one they would rate either excellent or very good in terms of both ease of use to the voter and security. That was a devastating finding to me.

Even though I voted for HAVA, I went back to the drawing boards and looked at what was going on in my State. My State at this point has received the $41 million to buy machines, to buy technology which is probably not enough money to get an optical scanner and a paper trail, but it has not received the larger amount of money it should have received, $117 million, to do the voter education and all of the work that is necessary to bring up these new systems. So even though we voted for this law, just Ohio is $66 million short in trying to bring these technologies up by next year. I wanted to place this on the Record.

Timing is vital.

While communities are waiting to find out exactly how much money they may be getting, and some others do not want to move on acquiring equipment until they are sure of how much money they will be receiving, it is important to keep in mind:

While HAVA does state that new election machines should be in place for 2004; it is possible to get an extension until the first federal election held after January 1, 2006;

But in order to get this extension, an application must be submitted no later than January 1, 2004, at this point, to the General Services Administration, providing good cause for why the exemption should be granted;

GSA did send a letter to every governor and state election director when the initial Title I money was provided last year. However, they have not yet sent out a reminder of the impending deadline.

So far, only Illinois has applied for the extension, and this request was approved last week.

Other reasons why the extension should be requested:

Gives more time to make sure that the right machines are acquired, if new machines are acquired;

Gives more time to test and verify the machines;

More importantly, it gives more time for the vote verification provisions of the Holt bill to be implemented in a fashion that will be the most efficient with respect to any new voting machine system.

And it gives more time for people to decide whether or not they actually want to buy new machines, because while HAVA provides for new machines, it does not mandate them if current voting systems can demonstrate that they meet the integrity requirements of HAVA.