New GAO Report on Electronic Voting

The Government Accountability Office (the investigative arm of Congress) has released a new report, All Levels of Government Are Needed to Address Electronic Voting System Challenges.

COMPUTERWORLD has published a trenchant commentary by Brad Friedman. Excerpts:

The report covers the lack of security and reliability standards and testing for all electronic voting systems across the country at the federal, state and local levels. It reveals a system of democracy in utter disarray in the wake of the ill-conceived and ill-administered Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 and the technological nightmare now facing voting jurisdictions across the United States...

We concluded in 2005 that these concerns have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes.

Doesn't get much clearer than that, does it...

As well, Hite's report underlined yet again that the e-voting activists once criticized as "conspiracy theorists" have been right all along. It's hard for someone who's been following the trail for years not to break into a chorus of "I told you so," dedicated to the Republicans, Elections Officials, Voting Machine Companies (and a few utterly reckless and reprehensible Democrats to boot) who simply refused to handle the truth...

[E]lectronic voting systems are an undeniably critical link in the overall election chain. While this link alone cannot make an election, it can break one. The problems that some jurisdictions have experienced and the serious concerns that have surfaced highlight the potential for continuing difficulties in upcoming national elections if these challenges are not effectively addressed.

Note the word "effectively" in the above paragraph. Election Reform legislation is not enough; if it's not effective, it's meaningless and sends democracy back over the same cliff over which the process pitched in Florida 2000, Ohio 2004 and Sarasota 2006. Without a DRE ban -- as in Holt's bill if it's not amended -- there's nothing to stop us from heading off
that same cliff all over again in 2008.