The Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008
By reformedhippie. Filed in 2008 Elections |
If Congress were busy about taking care of the people’s business instead of chasing after Harriet Miers and Barry Bonds we would not need ‘emergency’ bills like this one. Submitted in the House this past January, H. R. 5036: The Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008 proposes to help jurisdictions pay for new paper ballot voting machines to replace automated voting machines which do not utilize voter-marked paper ballots. The ‘emergency’ factor is that they want to help get these machines installed by the November 2008 elections!!! The idea is a great one and should have been looked at by Congress long ago. But they are too busy passing-the-buck and name-calling to do anything important such as this.
I know touch screen voter wizardry has nice appeal and eye candy. And of course hanging chads are all the rage. But voter-marked ballots offer security… one piece of paper per voter that can be later recounted by hand if necessary… something you can touch and feel… not random bits flying through the ether. Remember the good old school days when you had to bring a #2 pencil to school for testing? Those types of systems have been around a very long time and we have not found anything to adequately replace them yet. They need to be used for voting as well.
November is fast approaching. Lawmakers have drug their butts on this. Let’s light a fire under them and help push this through!
