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36–023 2007

ELECTION REFORM: H.R. 811 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS 

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE 

ADMINISTRATION 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MEETING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 23, 2007 

Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration 

( 

Available on the Internet: 

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/administration/index.html 

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COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION 

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD, California, Chairwoman 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan, 

Ranking Minority Member 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

KEVIN MCCARTHY, California 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS

ZOE LOFGREN, California, Chairwoman 

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD, 

California 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

KEVIN MCCARTHY, California 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

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ELECTION REFORM: H.R. 811 

FRIDAY, MARCH 23, 2007 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:45 a.m., in room 

1310, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Zoe Lofgren (chairwoman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Lofgren, Millender-McDonald, Gonzalez, Davis of California, McCarthy, Ehlers. 

Staff Present: Tom Hicks, Election Counsel; Janelle Hu, Professional Staff Member; Matt Pinkus, Professional Staff/Parliamentarian; Kristin McCowan, Chief Legislative Clerk; Gineen Beach, 

Minority Counsel; and Peter Sloan, Minority Professional Staff. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Good morning. The subcommittee will come to 

order. I would like to ask everyone in the room to please turn off 

your cell phones, if you have not done so yet. 

Today, we are going to discuss H.R. 811, Voter Confidence and 

Increased Accessibility Act of 2007, which would amend the HAVA 

Act of 2002 with respect to ballot verification and mandatory paper 

record audit capacity, and accessibility and ballot verification of results for individuals with disabilities. Mr. Holt’s legislation also 

aims at increasing the security of voting of systems through prohibiting the use of undisclosed software and also banning any conflicts 

of interest between voting machine vendors and test labs. We know 

that our election process must be open and transparent, and we 

know that we need standards to modernize our voting system and 

to bring accountability into the system throughout America. 

Election reform is not a partisan issue. This is something we can 

all agree on, and this bill has bipartisan support. For this reason, 

I am delighted that Governor Crist of Florida has accepted our invitation to testify to the progress that he is making in his State. 

This hearing on the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility 

Act is just one step in the process for making elections—a fundamental tenet of our democracy—open, fair, accountable and correct. 

So I will now recognize the ranking member for any opening 

statement he may have. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Well, I thank the chairwoman for calling this 

hearing on an opportunity to examine H.R. 811. I am excited about 

hearing from the individuals today. 

During the last election, we had more than 435 results certified 

by respective States, and we have quite a few State representatives 

here that were certified as well. So I look forward to the discussion. 

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Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. 

All the members are invited to submit their statements for the 

record. 

[The information follows:] 

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Ms. LOFGREN. As Governor Crist has another obligation, we are 

going to ask him to testify first and take questions only from myself and the ranking member. 

Governor Crist is here to speak about what he is doing in his 

State, where there were several contested elections in Florida. But 

he is not here about that. He is here about the future, and that 

is all that we are here to examine today. 

So we are just so honored that you are here, and we are honored 

that our colleagues, Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Bob Wexler, are 

going to do the honors of introducing you. 

Mr. Wexler, shall we begin with your introduction? 

Mr. WEXLER. Thank you very much, Madam Chair; and thank 

you for giving Congressman Diaz-Balart and I the honor of presenting and introducing to you and the committee our Governor in 

Florida. 

Governor Crist has served 3 months as Governor, and in that period of time he has reformed the way in which government does 

business in Florida. Governor Crist is a Republican, but Democrats, 

Independents and Republicans alike in Florida are very proud of 

the very inclusive fashion in which he has governed thus far. 

There is no better example of his inclusiveness than the election 

proposal that he put forth to the Florida Legislature in his budget, 

which I dare say has resolved a very divisive issue in Florida that 

has persisted for the last 6 years. In essence, what Governor Crist 

has done, he has proposed replacing electronic machines, which do 

not have any paper trail, which do not have a backup system, with 

an optical scan system that will be used in each of Florida’s counties, both on election day and in early voting. In the process, I believe he has created what I hope will be a model for the Nation in 

ensuring that everyone’s vote is cast and counted in the manner in 

which they choose. 

And it is with great pleasure that I ask my dear friend, Congressman Diaz-Balart, to continue. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Congressman Wexler. 

It is a privilege for me to join my good friend Robert Wexler, 

Madam Chairman, distinguished ranking member and members of 

the subcommittee, in welcoming our Governor here to the Capitol. 

Charlie Crist is a close personal friend of my brother’s and of 

mine and indeed of my family’s, and we have long been proud of 

him. As Congressman Wexler has made reference to, in the short 

time that he has been Governor, the people of Florida have been 

able to see what extraordinary judgment guides his actions day in 

and day out and his exceptional fairness. He is a man who everyone can know, and, as I say, the people of Florida are realizing, 

makes his decisions in an ultimately fair way. So as we have seen 

him in the short period of time that he has been Governor already 

tackling issues, dealing with issues that the people of Florida want 

to be dealt with. Obviously, we are even more proud of him. 

So it is a great privilege, and I thank you, Madam Chairwoman, 

for allowing Congressman Wexler and I to introduce our Governor 

to you because of the esteem, the respect and, indeed, the admiration that we have for Governor Crist. So thank you and all of you 

members for this great privilege. 

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Ms. LOFGREN. Well, thanks to both of you. 

Governor Crist, I can’t think of another time when I have heard 

such passionate praise on a bipartisan basis for a Governor. So I 

look forward, and we all do, for hearing your testimony at this 

point. Thank you very much. 

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLIE CRIST, GOVERNOR OF 

FLORIDA 

Governor CRIST. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I first want to thank you for your graciousness in allowing me to—and to all the members of the committee, I appreciate the chance to be here. 

And I want to thank my friends, and we are great friends. I have 

known Lincoln and Robert, the Members of the Congress, for many 

years. The words you just heard are incredibly kind and almost 

embarrassing, but I am very grateful for their friendship and for 

their leadership. 

On behalf of the people of Florida, they have been tremendous 

public servants, and we have a very proud delegation. I am very 

proud of all of our members of our delegation. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, 

along with Alcee Hastings, Chair it; and they do an extraordinary 

job for the people of our State. And I am just proud to be able to 

be here. 

Congressman Wexler, as you know, has been a passionate advocate on behalf of improving our voting system; and his passion is 

evident this morning again, as is Lincoln’s, as it relates to voting 

and the importance of supporting our democracy. 

I also would like to recognize our Florida Secretary of State, Kurt 

Browning. He is here with us today as well, and he is doing a great 

job. 

I had the opportunity last evening to experience some of our national monuments. Standing at the feet of Lincoln and Jefferson, 

one can’t help but be inspired by their words and their dedication 

to freedom. I was struck by Jefferson’s words in which he said, and 

I will quote, ‘‘Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the 

progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, 

more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths are discovered and manners and opinions change. With the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the 

times.’’

I want to speak to you this morning about the important issue 

of a paper trail and share with you the improvements that we have 

proposed in the State of Florida to our election process. 

As we all know, Florida has garnered much attention in past 

elections. However, I am pleased to report that our State has entered a new era. With the bipartisan efforts of the Florida State 

Legislature and our administration, we have moved beyond finger 

pointing and laying blame. Together, we have tackled the challenges facing our elections process and have made great progress 

towards implementing, I believe, a system that will allow every eligible voter to have their voice heard and ensure that their vote 

counts. 

I would like to share with you the proposal that I am presenting 

to our legislature during the current session in Florida. I would 

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like to emphasize that every aspect of this proposal is aimed at a 

commitment to ensuring that every Floridian’s vote will be counted 

and verifiable. This proposal will move Florida toward a comprehensive, streamlined election system that does use a paper ballot in every voting precinct in time for the primary election in the 

fall of 2008. 

Our proposal has three major components to it. First, we will replace all touch screen voting machines in polling places with optical 

scanners. Optical scan voting machines have a proven track record 

for accuracy and provide the paper trail that can be used for any 

recount if necessary. 

As you know, this system allows for the voter to use a pencil to 

fill in a designated space on a paper ballot for each race. The voter 

would then insert the completed ballot into an optical scanning machine which then records the vote on paper that can be used for 

verification purposes. 

Second, we will provide a system known as a ballot on demand 

that will produce an optical scan ballot for all early voting sites. 

Ballot on demand is a ballot production system that can be utilized 

by absentee as well as early voters. Ballot on demand allows for 

individual optical scan ballots to be printed when the voter arrives 

for the early voting, thus eliminating the need for touch screens 

with voter-verifiable paper trails to be used at early voting sites. 

The benefits of the ballot on demand system from an election management standpoint are numerous. 

In conclusion, Florida has worked in a bipartisan manner, actually, a nonpartisan manner, to effectively improve our election 

process. Our goal is to resolve voter confidence through new systems and restore voter confidence, procedures and implementation 

of both Federal and State legislation. We are pleased with the 

progress we have made in our State and continually look to enhance our elections system and streamline the voting process for 

millions of Floridians. When one of our citizens casts a ballot in an 

election at any level, be it local, State or Federal, they can leave 

the polling place with the confidence that their vote has been 

counted, recorded and can also be verified if necessary. 

As the grandson of an immigrant who came to this country when 

he was only 14 years old, I have a deep and abiding admiration 

and love for this Nation, as do you. The United States offers its 

citizens exceptional power through our democratic process. That democracy must be preserved and protected. 

I know your respect for our system of government is why each 

of you serve in this august body with great honor. We must work 

together to continue to ensure the integrity of that process. Our 

electoral process is the foundation of our democracy. 

As my friend Lincoln Diaz-Balart knows well, people just 90 

miles south of Florida shores are unable to freely exercise that 

right to vote. Every 2 years, millions of Americans express their 

opinion without fear of consequence. Sadly, people around the 

world yearn for this freedom and don’t yet have it. 

We must work diligently to ensure our citizens’ votes are validated and they are valued. The right to vote is the most fundamental of all American rights. There is no greater testament to our 

democracy than the ability of the people to choose their leaders. 

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Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you, Governor, for an impressive statement. 

[The statement of Governor Crist follows:] 

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Ms. LOFGREN. By unanimous consent, we will limit the questions 

to myself and the ranking member, because the governor’s legislature is in session, and he needs to fly back there. 

I will just ask two quick questions. First, as we are looking at 

amendments to HAVA, concerns have been expressed by some elections officials as to the timing and whether changes can be made 

in time for the next election in 2008. So I am interested in how 

Florida is dealing with that. 

And the second question is, it is important to all of us and I 

know, sir, to you, that those who have disabilities have an opportunity to cast their vote freely and privately. And how are you addressing that? 

Governor CRIST. Thank you very much for the opportunity. 

The timing issue first. As I indicated, we believe that if the legislature grants our wish and gives us the appropriate funding to be 

able to pay for these machines, that again, by the primary of 2008, 

they would be in place. 

Your other issue is extremely important to us as well. To make 

sure that the disabled have the opportunity to vote and that every 

one of their votes would count, we would employ touch screens with 

a printed ballot that would be produced next to it so that the opportunity and the ease of voting is accommodated there as well. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. McCarthy. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. I thank the Governor. 

I was reading the statement that you submitted. It was different 

than what you read. 

I want to congratulate Florida on the improvements they have 

made. You were saying, dropping down on the Presidential from 

2000, the undervotes down to .4 percent. Tremendous improvement. I thank you for that. 

I come from a large State, California. We are moving our primary up. Are you moving your primary up? 

Governor CRIST. We may be. And it is a very timely question. In 

fact, yesterday in our House of Representatives they passed an opportunity to move it up to either January 29 or maybe even February 5. It is uncertain in its language at this point. 

Our State Senate, with a friend of the Congresswoman’s, a new 

Senator, Jeremy Ring, has filed a bill that would address the same 

issue and also have the opportunity to move it up. But it is unclear 

at this point, but it may be moving in that direction. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. The other thing, knowing we are both from large 

States and we go out to make purchases, I just worry about the 

timeline. Is Florida willing to pay for all of your new optical machines if that is where you end up going? And by the purchase 

agreement, going out to bid and you move the primary up, will you 

have the time and the training to be able to do that? 

Governor CRIST. We believe that we will. That is a very important issue to us. We are willing to pay for it. As the Congressman 

mentioned, we have recommended it in our budget from the Governor’s Office to the legislature. We are pretty confident that they 

are going to honor their request. 

It is important to both our States. I have a sister who lives in 

the golden State, Laguna Beach. But I think it is very important 

that we have the appropriate funding, that we make sure the citihsrobinson on PROD1PC76 with HEARING

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zens can have faith in their voting system and that the election of 

the next President is one that is carried out with integrity and 

honor so that our country continues to move forward. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. I thank you for your time. 

Ms. LOFGREN. With that, let me note that other members may 

submit questions to Governor Crist, and he has graciously offered 

to provide a written response. 

Governor, we were so delighted and pleased that you were able 

to join us here today. Thank you so very much for making the effort to share your experience. 

Governor CRIST. Thank you, ma’am, very much for having me. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Well, we now have our two colleagues, Congressman Rush Holt and Congressman Tom Petri, who are sponsors of 

the bill that is the subject of this hearing. 

We know them as well as friends and colleagues, but, for those 

in the audience, Congressman Holt is a Member of Congress from 

New Jersey. He has held positions as a teacher, congressional 

science fellow and arms control expert at the U.S. State Department; and he was the Assistant Director of the Princeton Plasma 

Physics Laboratory prior to his election to the Congress. 

Tom Petri represents Wisconsin’s Sixth Congressional District 

and is serving his 15th term in the House of Representatives. He 

is the ranking member on the Aviation Subcommittee of the House 

Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; and he is a former 

chairman of the House British American Parliamentary Group, an 

official organization formed to strengthen relations with the British 

Parliament and known as a foe of government waste. 

We are happy to have you both here and to present on the bill 

that is the subject of this conference. 

Mr. Holt, if you would begin. 

STATEMENT OF HON. RUSH D. HOLT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY 

Mr. HOLT. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I am delighted to be here with Mr. Petri, not only one of the couple hundred co-sponsors but one of the leading co-sponsors of H.R. 

811. 

Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Ehlers, Mr. Gonzalez, Mrs. Davis, I am sure 

you will agree with me that a self-governing country works only if 

we believe it does. The faith in the process of democracy has been 

shaken, and I think we have to take immediate steps to restore 

that trust. Anything of value should be auditable, and it is central 

to this legislation that each voter’s vote will be verifiable and the 

results of every election will be publicly auditable. 

As it is with nearly 40 percent of the voters around the country 

now, they are being asked to vote in ways that cannot be verified. 

In fact, a voter can leave the polling booth scratching her head or 

his head and wondering if the vote was recorded the way they intended. In fact, without a voter-verified paper ballot, no election official, no computer scientist, no vendor will be able to reconstruct 

what the voter intended. Only the voter can verify what she or he 

intended, and that is at the heart of this legislation. 

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counts and audits. It would preserve and enhance the accessibility 

requirements of the Help America Vote Act and fund the development of new accessible ballot marking and ballot reading technologies. 

It would require random audits—and this is key—in every Federal election; and it would require that voters be given emergency 

paper ballots, emergency ballots immediately upon machine failure 

to prevent any disenfranchisement, as we saw, for example, this 

past year in Maryland. It would ban wireless devices, undisclosed 

software and Internet connections in order to make certain that the 

devices that are used are independent and unmodified. 

It is worth pointing out that a number of States, more than two 

dozen, have paper ballot-based voting now. Many of these requirements have recently been enacted. 

I think our legislation, which has been prepared with meticulous 

care and reviewed by many individuals and organizations, is somewhat better than many of those States. It is worth pointing out, for 

example, though 27 States have some sort of paper ballot-based 

voting, only 13 States conduct random audits. 

This would require, as I say, random audits in every election. We 

have seen too many elections in recent years where the winner was 

lack of evidence and the loser was the intent of the voters. This I 

think will correct that. 

I know there is some question about our ability to accomplish 

this in time. I am pleased that Governor Crist was able to speak 

this morning, because that gives an example that it is possible. As 

I understand what he plans to do, it would comply fully with this 

legislation, and they intend to have that in place before their primary in 2008. 

Certainly if we were able to spend billions of dollars and mount 

a national effort to comply with the Y2K imagined or maybe imaginary threat, we certainly should be able to mount this same kind 

of effort to deal with something that is central to the functioning 

of our democratic government. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much, Congressman Holt. 

[The statement of Mr. Holt follows:] 

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STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS E. PETRI, A REPRESENTATIVE 

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN 

Mr. PETRI. Well, thank you very much for having this hearing, 

and I have a statement that I appreciate you making——

Ms. LOFGREN. We will make it part of the record. 

Mr. PETRI. I will just summarize by saying the key responsibility 

we have is to do everything we can to assure public confidence in 

the integrity of the election process. That is, in my mind, accomplished by having a paper trail that can be checked; and if there 

is a recount, that people have confidence that they are getting an 

accurate count as a result of the recount. 

There are always going to be some gray areas and questions in 

any system. We are in the business. We have all been through or 

have known colleagues who have been through recounts, but it is 

very important to have that opportunity. 

People can challenge votes. They can look at it. They can look at 

each one and actually assure themselves that, as best can be determined, the voters’ intention is being carried out. Some of these 

electronic systems don’t provide that, and it seems to me that undermine confidence, and we all know the kind of conspiracy feelings that people have as a result. 

So I have confidence that this committee, with your expertise, 

will sift through the various ideas. Look at what Florida is doing 

and what many States have already done to assure their voters 

they do have a verifiable paper trail and get Federal law in line 

with that objective. 

Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Petri follows:] 

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Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you both very much. We know that this is 

a busy day for all of us, and we appreciate your taking the time 

to appear here and to be willing to answer some questions if we 

have some. 

In your written statement, Congressman Petri, you talk about 

some technical issues in the bill. Do you feel that we can deal with 

those technical issues as part of the hearing process and the 

amendment process? 

Mr. PETRI. I think so. And I also think you have to be careful 

that—you have different vendors who are, obviously, looking for a 

little bit of an opportunity to have an edge when it comes to buying 

their equipment, and it seems to me the objective of the legislation 

should be not to favor one vendor over another but to make sure 

that there are standards that ensure an independently verifiable 

paper trail. 

There are some issues about whether you would permit, for example, kind of like a credit card receipt and then the voter is supposed to look at it and say, yeah, that is the way I voted. I am not 

sure that really meets the standard of separate, after the fact, 

independent audit. I would prefer that people could look at what 

the voter actually did and check it out in a recount. 

So there are issues like that that you need to look at very carefully, but it shouldn’t be that complicated. Many States I think 

have got it right. The systems are in place where you cross—

draw—as Governor Crist said, you draw a line through an arrow 

behind the name of the candidate you favor. The machine scans it 

and you see it drop into a bin. Those are there. They can be recounted or reprocessed and checked. It is a pretty confidence-inspiring system, I think. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Holt, I know that both of you actually are very 

concerned, as are we, that disabled voters be able to have full access to the democratic process by casting a private vote, and you 

are aware that some concern has been expressed in some sectors 

relative to the paper trail and the ability of the visually impaired 

to certify that. What is your answer to that? How do we make sure 

that all Americans, including the disabled, are accommodated? 

Mr. HOLT. Well, not only is increased accessibility explicitly dealt 

with in the legislation, it is really central to the conception of the 

legislation, that it is intended to build on the Help America Vote 

Act and enhance the accessibility. 

I know there are some in the country—now you see it on the 

blogs—that are asking that we do away with all electronics and 

have paper ballots only. When confronted, they say, well, that is 

not quite what they mean, but it is, in fact, what they say. That 

would be a step backward, I think, as far as accessibility goes. 

Voters with physical limitations don’t want a separate but equal 

system of voting. They want to be able to vote in secret, independently, just as every other citizen does; and this legislation I think 

certainly allows that. 

We have been careful not to get into the certification business, 

not pick and choose certain kinds of systems that should be used. 

Rather, we have chosen to establish principles that must be observed with a full recognition that there are systems available that 

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meet those principles; and the principles are accessibility, 

auditability and voter verifiability. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. My time has expired. 

Mr. McCarthy. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Well, I thank both of you for coming. 

My first question is to Congressman Holt. Your bill talks about 

open source software. A lot of these machines run on also a Microsoft-based—and they have the intellectual property and protection 

and others, and they have to update regularly as they go through. 

How do you proceed to solve that problem? Or would you just keep 

it all publicly displayed or ask for that? 

Mr. HOLT. The legislation as written was reviewed by a number 

of computer scientists and endorsed by them and by groups and organizations as well. I am certainly aware of that problem. 

Someone once said to me, why can’t the software be publicly disclosed? It only counts. What is the proprietary secret that must be 

protected? 

Chairwoman Lofgren made reference to the legislative process 

that you are going through now. I am certainly willing to talk with 

you, and I am sure the computer scientists around the country who 

have shown such interest in this matter of verifiable voting would 

be willing to talk with you, to get the precise language that will 

give all voters the confidence that comes from transparency and, at 

the same time, protect legitimate trade secrets. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Thank you. 

We have had quite a few hearings setting up to this one today, 

and you were able to participate in one we had the other day. The 

thing that struck me was the number of elected officials that run 

elections from the county to the Secretary of State that seem opposed to this bill and—I mean, we had the Executive Director of 

the National Association of Election Officials. I was just wondering 

if you could talk to that, explain to me why the majority of them 

would oppose your bill. 

Mr. HOLT. I don’t know to whom you are referring. I haven’t 

taken a tally. But it was my sense that a large number of elected 

officials, the majority of elected officials, support this. 

I do, for example, have here the written testimony that was submitted to you from the Secretary of State of Minnesota, speaking 

in favor of this legislation and also making the point that it could 

be implemented within the time prescribed. 

I think some election officials have kind of the usual personal reluctance to have anybody tell them what to do. You know, several 

of them have said to me, what is the matter? Don’t you trust us? 

You know, it seems to me that is like a CEO saying, well, I am 

not going to have the books audited because what is wrong? Don’t 

you trust me? 

You want independent auditing in any case for anything of value. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Can I ask you one question? 

Mr. HOLT. Yes, sir. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Do you have this letter that I got from NCSL 

and NACo, National Association of Counties opposing your bill? 

I mean, I don’t assume that—and I come from the State legislature. I find elected officials, whether Republican or Democrat, want 

to have accountability and want to have honest elections. 

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Then I guess if I could just follow up on another question with 

you. I appreciate your passion on this bill, and I appreciate your 

desire to make sure we have accurate elections. An interesting 

thing happened in one of the panels. A person said that their organization goes through all phases. And I agree with you. I want to 

make sure at the end of the day we have the most honest elections 

we can. And a unifying thing that most everybody says, the more 

people handle ‘‘paper’’, the more options you have to have problems. 

But, okay, we count at the end of the day auditing that those 

who voted make sure their votes counted. In your bill, you never 

addressed or would you address the people who vote—are we allowing people to vote who don’t have a right to vote? Would that not 

be overall accountability when a person says ′′all phases′′ and did 

you think of that or would you bring that into your bill? 

Mr. HOLT. There are, I think, a number of aspects of elections 

and voting in the United States that still need attention, that has 

to do with everything from the registration lists to whether felons 

or former felons should be allowed to vote to how provisional ballots are counted and what happens if you intentionally deceive voters. 

There are a number of things that are not dealt with in this legislation, including conflicts of interest, except in a limited way with 

regard to system vendors and so forth. There is a little language 

about conflict of interest, but I think many of those things are better dealt with in other pieces of legislation. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Thank you for your time. 

Ms. LOFGREN. I would note for the record that the testimony of 

the Secretary of State of Minnesota, Mr. Mark Ritchie, will be included in the record. 

[The statement of Mr. Ritchie follows:] 

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Ms. LOFGREN. Now I invite Congressman Gonzalez to—— Mr. GONZALEZ. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. 

If I am not here throughout the proceedings, it is because we 

have a mark-up in Energy, and I will be going back and forth. 

My second observation is that I don’t think the sky is falling, but 

I think parts of the ceiling may be falling. So if I rush out of the 

way——

Rush, thank you very much. Tom, thank you very much for your 

testimony today. You have been here for the testimony for other 

election officials, and it seems to me—and we have the Governor 

today, of course, with his proposed legislation in Florida. If you had 

your druthers, would you prefer to go the route that Governor Crist 

is proposing in Florida, as opposed to your bill? Because we deal 

with legislative realities. I understand that. But I am just talking 

about if you had choices, because I am going to ask the same question of Tom in a minute. 

Mr. HOLT. I have only had a second-hand account of what precisely the Governor is going to do. It sounds to me as if it would 

be fully in compliance with this legislation. 

As I said, in drawing the legislation, we recognized that running 

elections has been, under the Constitution, the purview of the 

States and that there are many, many systems already in use. We 

chose not to specify election systems here. We didn’t want to get 

into the certifying business of—that this system is good for physical 

accessibility for people with physical disabilities, this system is not, 

and so forth. So not knowing enough about the Florida system and 

in keeping with my general principle of this bill, I think I really 

can’t answer that. 

Mr. GONZALEZ. Tom, same question. 

Mr. PETRI. Yeah. I think there is a danger of trying to overload 

what should be a pretty simple bill that has at its heart ensuring 

basically a paper trail so there can be an accurate recount. And 

issues of—as the Governor said and, of course, Florida, we are all 

aware of, has been in the crosshairs because of close Presidential 

elections and so on. But it has happened in every State, I suspect, 

in one election or another. 

I think we should allow a reasonable amount of initiative to the 

people that have to carry this out and what the States are doing 

to deal with this problem, frankly. And I think the Governor has 

indicated he has bipartisan support in his State, and that is important I think for public confidence, for members of both parties as 

well. 

There are a lot of other issues that might well be dealt with at 

one time or another, you know, who is qualified to vote, helping 

handicapped people vote with various types of disabilities and so 

on. But the key point, after what happened in Florida, is to attempt to upgrade or help States upgrade the election process, and 

to make sure that we have a system that people have confidence 

in at its core; and that is what I think the Governor was attempting to address. 

Mr. GONZALEZ. And, believe me, I appreciate the effort that you 

are demonstrating regarding this piece of legislation. It seems to 

me—and we will have this debate—that if any State has had experiences that leads them to probably seek the most thorough of remhsrobinson on PROD1PC76 with HEARING

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edies, it has to be the State of Florida. So I really applaud the Governor. 

Let me tell you what I mean by that. It seems to me that I know 

we should have a paper trail. That is important. The voter can 

then verify to make sure that those are the votes, if in fact the 

voter takes his or her time and such. And then, for the purpose of 

a recount, obviously, without a paper trail, we know a recount 

means nothing in most instances; and I will tell you that from my 

experiences in the State of Texas. 

The remedy that Florida proposes, though, it appears to have 

something in the front end; and that is that I think at the time of 

casting the ballot you have a more informed, thorough process at 

that point, if you take the testimony of the Governor. 

It also addresses something else other than the verification, the 

audit, the recount, which is incredibly important, but, at the front 

end, we are talking about undervoting, undercount—people that 

believe they have cast a vote and somehow have not. 

I really believe that Florida may be onto something, and I think 

we need to be exploring that avenue, and there is so much more 

to discuss, and I need to go. But, Madam Chair, there are other aspects of the voting process regarding its integrity, who is allowed 

to vote and so on. I think that is a different issue that needs to 

be dealt with, just as voter intimidation and denial of the right to 

vote by those who are eligible to vote. That is an argument, that 

is a debate for a different day, I believe, and that we should expend 

some energy on it, but, today, I think we are really looking at the 

mechanics. 

Thank you very much. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you, Mr. Gonzalez. 

Let me note our colleague, Corrine Brown, is here also from Florida. And Mr. Ehlers. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

First of all, I would observe that the ceiling never fell in when 

the Republicans were in control. Maybe we have had a few tremors 

in the last year. 

First, for Dr. Holt, a very specific question that my staff was 

wondering about. Do you know of a DRE with a VVPAT that currently meets the accessibility standards described in your bill and 

that would be ready for deployment in 2008? 

Mr. HOLT. Yes, I think there are several. In fact, there were several that were on display in this very room a week or so ago. 

Mr. EHLERS. Okay. I would just appreciate for the record if you 

could just give those to us later. I don’t want to take your time 

here. 

Mr. HOLT. All right. 

Mr. EHLERS. Next, I totally agree with you. You stated your objective at the beginning that every voter should have the assurance 

that the vote they cast is counted and, as you said, verifiable. That 

is a good goal. I have always added a second one, that they also 

have the assurance that their vote is not diluted by fraudulent 

votes being cast elsewhere. I think that is very important. We often 

forget that. 

For example, the reason that the voting machines were developed, the primary reason was because of all the fraud that occurred 

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with the paper ballots of that day; and I find it interesting back 

then they went from paper to machines in order to avoid fraud and 

get reliability. Now we are talking about going from machines to 

paper to get better reliability. 

I am not against your bill, by the way. I have raised a lot of 

questions about the specifics of it, but the State of Michigan has 

had several elections already using equipment precisely the same 

as what Florida is planning to install. Frankly, I think optical scan 

is a good approach, but it is not just the equipment. We have to 

get away from the idea that establishing equipment answers it. 

The election in 2000 in Florida had a paper trail called punch 

card ballots. It is no different from the optical scan. You punched 

the ballot, the machine counted it and so forth. They did not maintain it properly, and that is what led to all the confusion. 

So it really, once again, comes down to the local level. 

I have some 35 years’ experience at local elections and working 

with Secretaries of State. Some are absolutely superb. In a few 

elections it tends to go bad, but it is not always just the equipment. 

One other comment, your comment about some opposition to your 

bill, and indeed there is, but I think the real issue is that most—

the counties, the States feel it is overly prescriptive and that it 

doesn’t trust their judgment to handle local situations, particularly 

I think the detailed audit requirements. For years, States have had 

a lot of audit requirements. It is called the Board of Canvassers, 

and they each have developed their own methods to suit their particular localities and particular States. So, I think the prescriptive 

nature of your audit requirement is what has alienated the counties and the States. The Boards of Canvassers have a very good 

record of doing this. 

These are just comments on the bill. As I say, I don’t oppose your 

intent, but I think we have to be very careful. First of all, not infringe on what the actual poll workers want to say and do, but, secondly, have a reasonable approach how that works and not define 

the market simply by being very prescriptive. 

I do have a question for you. You are a physicist, as I am, and 

you have used computers most of your life. How did you verify the 

results of the computers when you used them? 

Mr. HOLT. Usually and, in fact, it is a principle of computer 

science that a computer program cannot verify itself. There must 

be an independent verification. In other words, whether the landing module actually touches down or whether the books balance 

separately. Some people compare this to ATM machines; and I say, 

really, it is quite different from ATM machines. Because at the end 

of the month, you and the bank compare notes. But that cannot 

happen in the case of voting and still maintain the secrecy. So 

whenever I have done computer programming and I think whenever anybody does, the verification must come through some independent path. 

Mr. EHLERS. But also verification can come through using the 

computer appropriately. I have verified programs by using the 

same computer but taking a different approach. My point is simply, 

being overly prescriptive and requiring a paper trail, couldn’t we 

also just require that there be a verifiable redundant trail which 

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could, in fact, include the computer with an additional CPU that 

observes the keystrokes? 

Again, you don’t necessarily have to answer that and say, yes, 

that is okay. My point is simply, let’s let the market and let’s let 

the county clerks, the State, the Secretaries of State, and the State 

election officials decide which system is best for their State. We 

should just establish the principle that the result of the voters’ actions has to be verifiable, has to be verifiable in your language by 

the voter, him or herself, but also by the canvassers, those who 

tally the votes and so forth. Would you accept that as a guiding 

principle? 

Ms. LOFGREN. The gentleman’s time has expired, but you can answer that. 

Mr. HOLT. I can answer that very quickly by saying there have 

been suggestions that you use a separate electronic method of 

verifying an electronic count. That would not give the voters confidence. Maybe someday, in which case we would want to rewrite 

and update this legislation. But I think all of the co-sponsors and 

the endorsers of this legislation believe that the only way we will 

have confidence in the voting system is with paper ballots that voters can independently verify. 

Mr. EHLERS. The only way I will—— Mr. HOLT. And as for fraudulent voters, there have been very few 

cases—— Ms. LOFGREN. We are going to ask—— Mr. HOLT [continuing]. Prosecuted around the country. 

Ms. LOFGREN [continuing]. Congresswoman Davis be permitted 

to ask her questions. 

We are going to have I think a vote around noon, so I think we 

are going to have to ask people after this panel to stick a little bit 

closer to the 5 minutes. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, will be in and out 

a little bit; and I am looking forward to the next panels as well. 

But I wonder if you could just comment—I think one of the criticisms perhaps in terms of this prescription has been for the durable and archival paper trail, and if you could just comment on that, 

whether that is something, you know, we have available to us so 

that it is not necessarily in a roll—and, again, how would those 

paper rolls—if that or something archival—be counted, be audited 

and then possibly be recounted? 

Mr. HOLT. Is that to me? 

Mrs. DAVIS. Sure. 

Mr. HOLT. When we wrote the bill, I didn’t understand that archival paper has a generally understood meaning that archivists 

and book historians and others refer to. We definitely want, I believe, a durable paper ballot. It does not have to meet the standards of archival quality, and so that is a word that I would suggest 

changing in the legislation. 

I know some have said we are using thermal paper, thermal 

printer paper, and we would like to continue to use that. I had a 

good example last weekend where I got a receipt on thermal paper, 

and I just sent it to my staff yesterday. Because when I went to 

look at it again, I guess because it had been near a hot liquid or 

something, it was illegible just from last weekend. It is not durable. 

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It is not the sort of thing that you want to count and recount weeks 

or even months later. 

Mrs. DAVIS. So this is an issue that you are still looking at? Just 

for the record. 

Mr. HOLT. That is right. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. I appreciate that. 

I am going to ask this question to the next panel. Hopefully, I 

will be here at that time. Because what we are talking about really 

goes to the heart of voter confidence. 

One of the issues that was kind of facetiously mentioned at our 

hearing the other day, paper or plastic, as people come to vote, but 

the reality is that people choose absentee in many cases. They 

sometimes need a provisional ballot so there is an alternative to 

whatever system is in place at the precinct, and I am wondering 

if there is anything in your legislation here that precludes using 

both an electronic system and a paper system—well, I guess optical 

scans are electronic. But something that—where people were actually making those choices. Is there anything in your legislation that 

would preclude that——

Mr. HOLT. Well, I am not quite sure——

Mrs. DAVIS [continuing]. As long as it has a verifiable paper ballot? 

Mr. HOLT. Yes. What our legislation requires, that there be a 

voter-verified paper ballot. Now what goes along with that, we 

don’t really specify. There are some accessibility issues that, you 

know, a purely paper system cannot help the voter with disabilities 

along with the process. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Exactly. And part of my question is——

Mr. HOLT. Ballot marking device certainly can, for example. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Right. And the issue is whether or not—and I didn’t 

suspect that there was in your legislation. I just wanted to confirm 

that. Because I think that, as the Governor from Florida mentioned, they will have two types essentially. My sense would be 

that people, disabilities or not, might choose one system over another; and there may be a point at which we arrive at that. We are 

not there today, but that is something that we might want to do. 

Mr. HOLT. The one issue on that subject that I would caution you 

on is, with all good intentions, coming up with a system that is separate but equal for people with disabilities, to the extent possible 

voters with disabilities should be permitted to vote as everyone 

does. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Right. As well. And anyone can vote on a system for 

the disabled as well. I think people could choose either system. 

I think that is all I am asking and just to be sure that that is 

nothing that would be in this legislation that would preclude that 

for the future. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you. 

We have been joined by the chairwoman of the full committee, 

Congresswoman Millender-McDonald, who will ask a few questions. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. Thank you so much, and good morning to you, 

members, the ranking member, good morning and good morning to 

all of you. It is great to see you here this morning. 

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I am especially pleased to see my colleagues, Congressman Rush 

Holt and Congressman Petri. 

I can say unequivocally that Congressman Holt has given this 

everything he has. He has worked tirelessly to make sure that this 

bill came before the Committee, and that we recognize the important work that he put into it. I thank you so much for your tenacity 

and for ensuring that we try to look into something that is especially important to the American people. People want to know that 

when they vote, their vote is counted accurately. You have come up 

with what you perceive is a way to ensure that happens. 

I have just one question, and I don’t know whether I can ask either of you. In December the Technical Guidelines Development 

Committee sent a recommendation to the Election Assistance Commission that said all voting systems meet requirements for an independent verification system that produces multiple independent 

records of ballot selections that can be audited to a high level of 

precision. Are there other methods for achieving voter confidence 

without using this paper? Is there anything, Mr. Holt or Mr. Petri, 

that you know about? Are you aware of that? 

Mr. HOLT. Actually, I am not sure that I understood the question. I apologize. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. Well, that is okay. I am looking into that further. 

Mr. HOLT. I will be happy to follow up on that. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. All right then. Is there any statistical data on 

the number of votes lost during the 2000 election because of overvotes and the number of votes lost in 2006 when DREs were used 

in elections? 

Mr. HOLT. Well, following the 2000 election, there was a study 

done by a group of academics from MIT and Caltech that looked 

at what they call residuals, overvotes, undervotes for various kinds 

of systems. 

And that is partially out of date now because many States have 

changed their systems in the meantime. But still there are 40 percent of Americans now who are voting in ways that are unverifiable on machines of the type that did not fare too well in those 

studies. So you might suspect that there are some problems that 

are going undetected because there are no paper ballots for the actual count. 

There have been other studies done by a variety of groups, more 

recently taking slightly different approaches. But, yes, there are 

data about overvotes and undervotes and the vendors, some of 

whom were here last week. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. Right. 

Mr. HOLT. Who have changed their designs in many cases to try 

to address those issues so that they will catch overvotes, undervotes, intentional and unintentional. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. Okay. Well, Madam Chair, I will just stop 

there and I will resume questioning the witnesses when your next 

panel comes, because it appears to be someone that you and I both 

know. 

Ms. LOFGREN [presiding]. Thank you both very much for your 

leadership on this issue. 

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We are now pleased to have two secretaries of State testify before us: the Honorable Debra Bowen, Secretary of State of California; and the Honorable Chris Nelson, Secretary of State of South 

Dakota. Thank you both so much for taking the time to be here. 

And another friend from California. Hello, Delores. 

Our Secretary of State—and I say we are heavily Californian on 

this committee—Debra Bowen is the author of the first-in-theworld law to put all of California’s legislative information on line 

and has required all audits to be conducted in public and to include 

absentee and early voter ballots. 

She was elected California Secretary of State last November. She 

has been a pioneer of open government, personnel privacy rights, 

and election integrity. After earning her law degree at the University of Virginia, she practiced corporate tax and ERISA law. And 

she was elected to the California Assembly in 1992, served for 8 

years in the California State Assembly. And she became only the 

sixth woman in California history to be elected to statewide constitutional office. We are very proud of Debra Bowen in California. 

And the Honorable Chris Nelson, South Dakota Secretary of 

State, has been the State election supervisor in the Secretary of 

State’s office for 13 years. He is currently serving, of course, as the 

Secretary of State, having been elected in 2002. 

Prior to becoming Secretary of State, he held the position of 

State election supervisor for 13 years and he received in 2003 the 

2003, Excellence in South Dakota Municipal Government Award 

from the South Dakota Municipal League. He has been appointed 

in 2005 as the National Governors Association representative on 

the United States Election Assistance Commission Board of Advisers. He graduated from White Lake High School and South Dakota 

State University in 1987 with highest honors. And we welcome you 

both. 

STATEMENTS OF HON. DEBRA BOWEN, SECRETARY OF STATE 

OF CALIFORNIA, AND HON. CHRIS NELSON, SECRETARY OF 

STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA 

Ms. LOFGREN. Debra, thank you so much for being here, and if 

you would start. We have this little machine, and we ask that the 

testimony try and be within 5 minutes. The written testimony will 

be a part of the official record. When the yellow light goes on it 

means you have about a minute left, but we are not too heavy on 

the gavel, as you have noticed. Welcome back, Debra. 

STATEMENT OF DEBRA BOWEN 

Ms. BOWEN. It is an enormous honor for me to be here with you 

today and I join you as a very proud American, proud of this country’s history, of our spirit, our ability to create and to innovate. And 

I believe that the greatest innovation in this country’s history is democracy itself. And when I work on these issues that involve the 

democratic process, I remind myself that in the history of civilization, there has been nothing obvious about self-governance. 

One of the wonderful things about democracy is it permits us to 

correct course. In fact, it demands we correct course. And in most 

of our country’s early elections, voters had to be white, male, and 

own 50 acres of property in order to exercise the franchise. We 

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have corrected course on that, of course, but we face another great 

challenge now, which is proving to skeptical citizenry that every 

vote counts. 

I would offer three key thoughts: 

First, at this point in our country’s history, every State’s elections affect every other State’s citizens. We truly are interdependent. 

Second, our democracy, our self-governance has costs, but those 

costs are a small price to pay for the certainty of fair, open, and 

honest elections, with results that are beyond doubt. 

And third, we can and should accomplish the goals of having fair, 

open, and honest elections, without doubt, and we should do that 

now. 

That provision that we be able to prove that the results of an 

election are accurate is our greatest challenge. That verification 

must be publicly reviewable and verifiable. Which is what makes 

it unlike the verification of software used, for example, on a lunar 

landing module or a fly-by-wire system. It is not just those who are 

using the computer system who have to be able to verify its accuracy, it is every single citizen who relies on the accuracy of the system has to be able to do that. 

This issue, as has been discussed here today, is not partisan. We 

currently in Orange County, California have a situation where two 

Republicans, Janet Nguyen and Trung Nguyen, are locked in a recount with less than 10 votes separating them. And the e-voting experts have already been engaged. 

So what steps can States and local jurisdictions take? Our first 

step in California was to require that electronic voting machines 

have a paper trail. That has been the law in California since 2004, 

pursuant to a bill carried by Republican State Senator Ross Johnson, who was just appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger to chair 

our Fair Political Practices Commission. But having the paper trail 

proved to be insufficient and we subsequently revised our laws to 

require that that paper trail be used to conduct the mandatory 1 

percent recount that every county does before an election is certified. 

And even so, in California questions about voting equipment persist and that is why I have undertaken a top-to-bottom review of 

every voting system that we currently use. We will review security, 

accuracy, verifiability and usability not just for voters and disabled 

voters, but also for poll workers and elections officials. The more 

complicated you make a system, the more likely you are to make 

mistakes, and I think that is a useful principle for all of us to keep 

in mind. 

So while I know what I would do if I were a county registrar of 

voters—I am not; my task in California, my statutory mandate, is 

to review systems to determine whether they meet the basic criteria of security, accuracy, verifiability and usability. We have a 

very short time frame to complete this. As you all know, we have 

recently added a February 5th primary to our election schedule for 

next year and I do not want to put county elections officials in the 

position of having to purchase and deploy new election equipment 

2 months before an election or between the three elections we will 

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ticipation. And I would ask and hope that other States would do 

the same. 

We cannot afford another election in which the citizenry questions the results once the election is complete. Thank you. 

[The statement of Ms. Bowen follows:] 

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Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very, very much. Mr. Nelson. 

STATEMENT OF CHRIS NELSON 

Mr. NELSON. Madam Chairwoman, members of the committee. It 

is truly a privilege for me to appear before this honorable committee. Just one additional bit of introduction of myself, I also 

serve as a cochair of the National Association of Secretaries of 

State Elections Committee. 

The key question that I would like to answer today is this: How 

can we improve the election system in America without damaging 

the things that are currently working? 

And my answer to that question is this: I ask you to allow State 

and local election officials the time and flexibility needed to perfect 

the HAVA mandates before we go on with additional mandates 

from the Federal level. 

I can assure you that after each election, election officials evaluate what worked, what needs to be improved and what new challenges may occur in the next election, and we work with a passion 

to get it right. You heard a powerful example from the Governor 

of Florida this morning about changes that they are making because of the issues that they have been involved with. They are 

making those changes at the State and local level. 

I ask who is best positioned to drive the change in the improvements that are needed in our election system in America? I believe 

it is State and local officials who understand the landscape. I also 

know that what might work in Los Angeles County may not work 

very well in Jones County, South Dakota, with 817 registered voters, and the perfect fit for Jones County may not work in San 

Diego or San Jose. One-size-fits-all mandates and requirements at 

the Federal level simply may cause unintended consequences and 

problems when implemented at the State and local level. As State 

and local officials, one of our first priorities when we work on 

change and improvement is to make sure we do no harm to the 

things that are already working. 

I just want to address briefly two of the principles in the whole 

bill, the first being the requirement for the individual verified 

paper ballot requirement. And I want to be clear. I am a paper ballot advocate. I am a paper component advocate. In South Dakota 

we have adopted the optical scan system with a touch-screen marking device for that system. It has worked very well. 

But I also understand that across America hundreds of millions 

of dollars have been spent in the last 3 and 4 years in faithful compliance with the requirements of the Help America Vote Act. That 

money was spent to procure equipment and train and implement 

and test that equipment. And now we are looking at a bill that 

may require much of that to be scrapped in the next 12 months 

and that is a shameful, shameful waste of taxpayer money and I 

hope we can find some way to work around that tremendous expenditure that has already been made to try to comply. 

I know the bill contains $300 million to help offset those costs. 

I don’t think that is going to be enough for the retooling that will 

have to happen across America with the requirements of the bill. 

The section 5 audit requirement provision of this particular bill, 

I absolutely agree and understand that accountability is a mandahsrobinson on PROD1PC76 with HEARING

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tory and valuable part of an election system. States are adopting 

audit requirements. States have provisions that can deal with 

these issues and are moving in that direction. But those provisions 

that States are adopting work in harmony with their existing procedures as opposed to complicating processes that are already in 

place. 

The audit provisions of H.R. 811, I believe, may lead to unintended consequences. In visiting with my State auditor, he said 

this is going to put me in a position of conflict of interest that we 

work very hard never to be in. The logistics are a concern to me. 

The audit board, is this board going to travel from county to county 

to county in some sort of traveling show doing vote counts? Or are 

we going to be sending ballot boxes into the State capital with all 

the accompanying security concerns that would be involved in that? 

I have questions about that. 

I have concerns about the delay that this will cause in certifying 

Federal elections. In 2004, South Dakota’s lone House seat was vacant. We held a special election. And our citizens were anxious to 

get that position filled. When they elected our Congresswoman, 

Stephanie Herseth, we were able to certify that in a day or two 

after the election. This bill would require that it take several weeks 

before an audit would be complete and we would be able to install 

a Congressperson when there is a vacancy. That is an unintended 

problem or consequence. 

As you are aware, there is a provision in this bill to reimburse 

States for that audit requirement. You are also aware that the 

original Help America Vote Act contained another $800 million of 

authorization to reimburse States for their costs. That money has 

never been appropriated. And I will tell you, at the State and county level we are skeptical whether or not the funds will be appropriated to pay for this new mandate. 

The last thing that I would say—and I would just ask you, work 

with us to allow us to finish implementing the original HAVA requirements and work out those problems that might be there at the 

State and local level before we put new mandates and pressures on 

the system. Thank you. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Nelson follows:] 

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Ms. LOFGREN. Now we will get into our questions. I just have a 

couple of questions. In California, you are doing a top-to-bottom review and—could this result in some machines or systems being decertified in this calendar year? 

Ms. BOWEN. Yes. 

Ms. LOFGREN. And then the counties would have to have another 

system in place by February of next year? 

Ms. BOWEN. That is correct. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Obviously, you wouldn’t do that unless you felt it 

was possible for them to comply. How do you think this is going 

to work? 

Ms. BOWEN. It is going to require a lot of teamwork with elections officials and the public. And one of the things that we can do 

in a primary election that we cannot do in the general is to lease 

equipment or to use equipment from other States. And that happened in the 2006 cycle in some places. We don’t all go to the polls 

at same time. 

Ms. LOFGREN. So your real deadline is November of 2008. 

Ms. BOWEN. The big issue for the country is November of 2008. 

And the other option, and it is one that has been used in California 

before, because we have to have an election and even if equipment 

is not what we would choose, we still have to have an election. But 

there are conditions that can be put in place that help make up for 

flaws in security, accuracy, and usability. 

So if we are in the situation where equipment does not meet the 

the standards, we will have some difficult choices to make about 

what conditions should be put into place. Just as an example, one 

of the difficulties we have had with some of the electronic voting 

machines is that they are in large counties. They are sent home 

with poll workers, sometimes as much as a week in advance, fully 

programmed, and stored in places that are not necessarily secure. 

One of the conditions we might think about is a much more secure 

means of delivery. That is available in the private sector. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Correct. Let me just raise the issue of software. 

You have been a proponent, if I am correct, of open source. Why 

have you advocated that? And if you could also comment—I think 

California requires an exact copy of source code to be put in an escrow-type situation, and I am wondering has that been resisted by 

software companies. Could you address those two issues? 

Ms. BOWEN. I have the software in my office, and when we do 

the top-to-bottom review we will engage experts to look at the software. But obviously I have fewer eyes and fewer experts to do that 

review, because some of that software is proprietary and I cannot 

release it. 

Using open source software has two advantages. One is that it 

allows everyone to review the software, and there are a very large 

number of computer programmers in this country who have not 

normally been highly active in political processes who are very engaged in issues around voting systems. 

And second, the ownership is in the public domain so that any 

State, any local jurisdiction, can use that software without paying 

a licensing fee; and also, then, if they are using open source software, can change vendors without having to scrap an entire system 

and buy everything over again. 

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Having said that, an open source system that is certified does not 

currently exist. There is a system that is ready to be certified. I 

would particularly be interested in seeing open source software 

used in the tabulator, because even if we go back to paper ballots 

at the polling place, we are going to be tabulating, using a computer, and that counting is so critical and it is so important that 

that software be open. 

And the other place I would like to see a focus on that is with 

better disabled voting systems. We do not have, for all of the great 

innovation in this country and in Silicon Valley, we don’t have a 

large number of choices in voting systems that meet the needs of 

some disabled voters. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you so much. 

Mr. McCarthy. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Thank you both for coming. If I could follow up 

with Secretary Bowen, in listening to your statement and hearing 

you in these concerns you have, in the bill it says it wants this to 

be implemented by 2008. And it sounds like that would be a major 

concern to you. And also the only concern I thought I had, listening 

to you, was the $300 million would not be enough. 

Ms. BOWEN. $300 million is not enough, particularly if States 

that currently have only touch-screen voting systems with no paper 

have to replace those systems. 2008 is doable for some parts of the 

bill and difficult for others. I am not going to ask my counties to 

procure something that does not exist, or to use it. So we have to 

be realistic about what exists. And then States need to get together 

and work towards creating systems that meet their needs. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. My other question to you, then, is would you 

propose to audit every Federal race, knowing some of these races, 

some are close and some are not close at all? Referring to our 

Speaker, she won with 80-some percent of the vote. I won with 71 

percent of the vote. And you and I had a little discussion about 

time line. The Secretary talked about time line. Would it be feasible or would it be better to do random? 

Ms. BOWEN. The best audit system, I think, is one that is random, but that in the randomly selected precincts does audit each 

vote, including early votes in that precinct and votes cast by absentee ballot or by mail ballot. 

One of the suggestions that I think has been the best is to then 

use that result to trigger a fuller review, depending on what the 

margin is. In a race in which there is only one candidate on the 

ballot, there is not a lot of need to go to a 100 percent hand recount 

or hand audit. But in a race such as the one in Orange County 

right now, where they are very close, it is appropriate I think for 

elections systems to build in a trigger that automatically does that 

audit without the need for a candidate to post the funds to do that. 

It is public interest to have accuracy. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. What percent do you do in California when we 

do the random? Do we do 3 percent or 1 percent? 

Ms. BOWEN. One percent. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Do you feel that is sufficient? 

Ms. BOWEN. It is not sufficient. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. What do you feel that number should be? 

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Ms. BOWEN. We need the guidance of statisticians. We want statistically significant audits and recounts. That is a stepped process. 

When I do the 1 percent count, if you get a result that is a significant difference you may decide that is not a place to recount. But 

this isn’t a place where politicians should be making the calls; it 

is a place where—statistics is a well developed science. We don’t 

need to reinvent it. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Maybe we should not sit down and mandate in 

every congressional race in California you need to do 10 percent of 

the vote. Would that be feasible? 

Ms. BOWEN. Of course it is feasible, but I don’t think it makes 

sense. It is not the best use of the resources that we have. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Okay. I appreciate you coming all this way. And 

congratulations, by the way. 

Ms. BOWEN. Thank you. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. To Secretary Nelson, you talked about one-sizefits-all does not work. If you could elaborate on that on some of the 

experiences you have had. 

Mr. NELSON. I have had a lot of years of experience working with 

the various laws—of election laws that we have to administer. In 

my written testimony I give a poignant example of a one-size-fitsall requirement that was in the Help America Vote Act. And it 

dealt with the requirement for putting minority languages on the 

voting machines in those areas that are covered by the minority 

language provisions of the Voting Rights Act. 

And in South Dakota that applies to Native Americans with the 

Lakota language. And we went to the leaders within that community and we said this is the new Federal requirement. And they 

said, that does not make any sense. Our people are not going to 

use that. And yet we said we have to do it. And so we did. And 

we spent $28,000 on that requirement, and 10 people statewide 

used it. It is $2,800 per voter that we spent on that particular requirement. 

In areas of our country where there is a heavy population of minority speakers, that might make sense. In other areas it does not, 

and yet that is one of the unintended consequences when we get 

Federal legislation that does not take that into account. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Thank you both for your time. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. It is very interesting to sit and hear the two 

of you who are the top guns, as election officials in your respective 

States, and yet as we sit here and talk to manufacturers and look 

at machines, it is disturbing to hear Secretary Bowen say that we 

do not have a lot of voting equipment that will work for the disabled. That seems to be a travesty in this country. 

Are we talking to manufacturers? Are they beginning to look into 

this? Where are we in this continuum? 

Ms. BOWEN. We do have some systems that I think meet the 

needs of disabled voters quite well. There is one system that is a 

ballot-marking device that has sip-and-puff capability, has capability for voters who are visually challenged, and that ballot-marking device produces a ballot that can be optically scanned. That is 

important because it means that counties that use an optical scan 

system and that ballot-marking device for disabled voters only need 

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one tabulating system, one auditing and review system, one place 

where everything is done. 

It is an enormous advantage to using optical scan ballots. It is 

a well-developed technology. You can, if you have a long line in a 

particular polling place, simply hand people the paper ballot and 

a marking device and they can shorten the line very quickly, if 

they choose to do so, by marking their ballot independently. 

But, again, I don’t like being in a position where there are only 

one or two or three vendors. And that is a place where, if we don’t 

have what we need, then I think it is our responsibility as election 

officials to get together. And States can do this together, and particularly with open source software. I think we will find that there 

will be foundations and groups who will work with us. I would expect if we come back with this issue in 2 years, that the landscape 

about what is available will be quite different than what it is currently. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. I had about six or seven manufacturers here 

last week with their machines, and one had a telephone-type machine that can be used by the disabled. How do you feel about that? 

Do you think that particular machine is good for our disabled voters? 

Ms. BOWEN. For many disabled voters that system is terrific. The 

difficulty is that it requires a securitized telephone call. It depends 

on a call that is originating from a place that is known. Otherwise, 

an election official has no way of knowing that the voter who is 

using the code they have been given is actually that voter, or 

whether the code has been given to someone else, usurped by someone else, sold to someone else. 

In States that use that system, a disabled voter has to come to 

a polling place or to the registrar’s office to be able to use it. We 

don’t have a mechanism to vote over the Internet, not because the 

technology isn’t there, but because we have no way to know who 

is casting that vote. 

So we will look at that system if counties in California want to 

use it. Vermont did use it. I believe it was quite expensive on a pervote basis and it does not solve the single greatest challenge to exercising the franchise for disabled voters, which is transportation 

to the polling place. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. The vendor did state that this type of phone 

system could be used in a polling place and that would make it a 

little easier for you to track it. 

Ms. BOWEN. In a polling place if you set up a secure connection, 

you can use that. But remember that polling places are often situated in locations that are challenged in terms of security. I have 

voted in a carpet store, I have voted in a garage, a living room, the 

fellowship room of a religious institution. Many of those places 

could not continue to be used with the advent of electronic voting, 

simply because they do not have the capacity to provide enough 

electricity to run all of the equipment that would be needed. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. Madam Secretary, you spoke of wanting to ensure that each vote is secure, accurate, and reliabe. How can we 

assure that, with everything we have just outlined, plus the myriad 

of other things that we know are taking place? 

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Ms. BOWEN. We have good lessons from the private sector on how 

to do this in two areas that I would suggest the committee review. 

One is in the casino industry where the standards for the auditing 

and the review of electronic slot machines are very stringent. They 

do things such as if there is a problem with an electronic slot, it 

is pulled off the floor immediately. We don’t do that with voting 

machines. We reboot and keep the machine in service in many instances. And that is a matter of money. The machines are expensive. If you have to provide enough machines in each polling place 

to allow for difficulties in pulling a machine, you are going to spend 

more money. But the casino industry and their standards are a 

useful measuring point. 

Another place that I think it is useful to look is the computer 

game manufacturers. They have a great interest in keeping counterfeit software from being used, and they have some very clever 

ways of determining whether the software that is running on a 

particular game card is actually what was licensed by the manufacturer. Some of it is trade secret and proprietary. But I have been 

very impressed with some of the tools that could help us in a situation where we have to verify that the software that was certified 

is actually what is running on every single location, which is another challenge that we haven’t talked about today. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. Both of those that have been cited in terms 

of looking into, in terms of helping us. And yet if it is proprietary, 

there we are back at square one. 

Will we have another round of questions, Madam Chair? 

Ms. LOFGREN. No, but with unanimous consent, the Chairwoman 

has an additional minute. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. You are just a sweetheart, thank you. Just 

one more question. Some DRE touch-screen voting machines use a 

paper ballot printer. In the voting forum that I held last week, I 

witnessed a printer that used a reel-to-reel thermal paper roll. A 

version of this type of thermal ballot printer was also used in Cuyahoga County, Ohio in May of 2006. 

You are probably familiar with the analysis of that election done 

by the Election Science Institute. One of the findings of the analysis was that almost 10 percent of the paper ballots were missing, 

damaged, or blank. How does that compare with your experience 

with the thermal printer and the ballots printed? Either one of you 

can answer that. 

Ms. BOWEN. I am extremely concerned about reliance on a paper 

trail that is printed either on thermal paper or on standard paper. 

The number of ways that that kind of system can go wrong mechanically is fairly—the list of problems, potential problems, is fairly long. Paper jams, overwrites. It is difficult, because the ballots 

are on a roll, to maintain secrecy if you only have a small number 

of voters voting. 

It is also difficult to audit. We do it in California pursuant to our 

law that requires that we use that paper trail, and it is a very cumbersome process as someone sits and goes through the paper and 

looks at the votes that were crossed out or unkept. 

The other issue that arises is what happens in a crowded polling 

place with long lines, where a voter may feel very pressured to vote 

because they know that there are several hours of people standing 

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behind them, and the time that it takes to actually verify properly 

may mean that people spend as long as 20 minutes voting on a 

touch-screen machine. 

We also had basic problems in California in our recent elections, 

such as the county elections officials not providing a sufficient supply of paper. We had a poll worker in Santa Clara County, the 

home of our high-tech industry, who sent a poll worker to Kinko’s 

with $40 to copy sample ballots, which, if marked by hand, are legally cast ballots in California. Otherwise the lack of paper was 

going to completely bring that polling place to a stop. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. Mr. Nelson did you want to expound on that 

a little bit? 

Mr. NELSON. We don’t have any experience in South Dakota with 

that type of technology, but all of the reasons that Secretary Bowen 

laid out and the potential problems are one of the reasons that we 

chose to go with the optical scanner in response to the HAVA mandate as opposed to going that direction. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. Thank you for your courtesy, Madam Chair. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Ehlers. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Madam Chair. I will try to be very brief 

because the time is wasting here. 

Secretary Bowen, I am very pleased with your last comment. One 

of the provisions of the bill I am very upset with is that it mandates that in case of dispute, the paper trail is the vote of record. 

I agree totally with you. I have very little confidence in the type 

of printers that you have described. I have seen some that I do 

have confidence in, but a number that I don’t. I thank you for making that point. We simply should not, sitting here in the Congress, 

decide what is the matter of record. That should be up to the local 

election officials and State election officials. So I appreciate your 

comment. 

Also, Mr. Nelson, I thank you for your comments because it reinforces my observation that maybe it is because I have been at the 

local level. I have been at the State level. I have a lot of confidence 

in our people there who know how to run elections better than 

many Members of Congress do, and your statements certainly reinforce that. 

I yield back so that we can move on. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. Congresswoman Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I just want to say, 

on a matter of personnel privilege, that I think the State of California is very fortunate actually to have such a diligent and attention-to-detail Secretary of State. And I appreciate that. 

And I wanted to just ask you very quickly if you could comment 

on the importance of a backup system at the polls. I mentioned the 

idea of people actually being able to choose one of two systems. One 

that would be available certainly to anyone who needed special assistance, but also to anybody who may be in line and need to vote 

in that way. 

Can you comment on that? And I guess for the future, what 

other issues ought we be looking at? 

Ms. BOWEN. The California law already requires that a voter— gives the voter a right to ask for a paper ballot. The implementation of that has been difficult in some counties. But in a county 

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that uses an optical scan system, again, that is a fairly simple matter because precisely the same ballot is created by the voter, just 

in a different manner. 

In a county that uses a touch screen or other electronic voting 

system, it means that the elections officers will need to find a different way to count hand-marked ballots. Either they need to have 

more than one voting system, they need to count optical scanned 

ballots if that is what the paper is, or they will be literally counting 

those ballots by hand as they do with write-in ballots and that, obviously, adds a significant amount of delay to the process. 

I think it is useful—backup, let me say, is a really critical issue 

that we have not addressed significantly as a country. We know 

from experience around the country that there will be problems at 

individual polling places and that you might have hurricanes, 

storms, various things, and you need to have a mechanism to allow 

people to vote. So the backup system is critical, and we have a lot 

to learn from what we did in Y2K and what is done in the private 

sector. 

When we look at our voting systems more generally and what 

issues we should be considering, we actually have very little academic research when it comes to usability by voters and what the 

experience of a voter—particularly one who is not accustomed to 

using ATM machines and does not have a credit card—what their 

experience is voting. 

Someone commented earlier that voting systems are only a small 

portion of the challenge that we face as election officials. Poll worker training and voter education are also very important and easier 

to accomplish using an optical scan system than using a touchscreen system. The whole audit procedure and the closing procedure is far simpler using the older technology that we have. 

So as we deal with what systems we should use, we need to ask 

for results. We need to ask for better measures of what we have 

done, and then we need to look at the overall costs; not just the 

cost of equipment, storage and all of the things we think of, but 

the costs of training, the cost of poll workers and the cost of educating voters. Every time we change voting systems, we have any 

number of voters who have a great deal of difficulty with the new 

system, and the same is true of poll workers who, as I am sure you 

know, are not getting younger as we go along. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Secretary Nelson, quickly. 

Mr. NELSON. One comment that I would make, when the Help 

America Vote Act was passed, one of the very first statements that 

I made in my State was that I did not want any of our polling 

places to be hostage to an electronic voting machine. So that if that 

machine went down, that things stopped and people could not vote. 

That is why we went with the optical scan device, with the voter 

assist device to mark that ballot. So I understand that concern. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. Thank you to both Secretaries of State. We know that your days are busy ones and we very 

much appreciate that you were willing to take this time and spend 

it with us and share your expertise. Thank you so very much. 

Our next panel, if they could come forward, would be Tanya Clay 

House, George Gilbert, Dr. Felten and Dr. Norris. 

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I would like to introduce Tanya Clay House who began her tenure with People for the American Way in April of 2002 as the senior legislative counsel. She now serves as director of public policy. 

Miss House also serves as the policy liaison for the the African 

American Ministers Leadership Council, a program of PFAW Foundation. She began her legislative career as counsel for our colleague, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. And in 2003 she was 

awarded the Congressional Black Caucus Chair’s Award for her 

dedication and leadership and commitment in advancing the cause 

of civil and human rights. 

George M. Gilbert, since 1988, has been director of elections to 

the Guilford County Board of Elections, a jurisdiction of more than 

300,000 registered voters. During his 19 years in this position he 

has administered 56 elections, using four different DRE voting systems. 

We have also Dr. Edward Felten, a professor of computer science 

at Princeton University. His research interests include computer 

security and privacy technology law and policy. He is the author 

of Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine 

Study, and his research on electronic voting has been covered extensively in the press. And we were fortunate to have him testify 

before this very committee in the last Congress. 

We also have Dr. Donald F. Norris, a professor of public policy 

at the University of Maryland, a specialist in public management, 

urban affairs, and application management and impacts of information technology in public organizations. He has consulted with 

local governments and State agencies for more than 25 years in the 

area of information technology and management. 

STATEMENTS OF TANYA CLAY HOUSE, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC 

POLICY, PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY; GEORGE GILBERT, DIRECTOR OF ELECTIONS, GUILFORD COUNTY, 

NORTH CAROLINA; EDWARD FELTEN, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF 

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, PRINCETON 

UNIVERSITY; AND DON NORRIS, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, BALTIMORE COUNTY 

Ms. LOFGREN. We welcome all of you. And because we have a 

vote coming soon, I will actually ask people to stay within 5 minutes, and your written testimony will be made part of the official 

record. And if we could begin with Tanya Clay House. 

STATEMENT OF TANYA CLAY HOUSE 

Ms. HOUSE. Good morning and thank you, Madam Chair, and 

Ranking Member McCarthy and the committee members. On behalf of the civil rights community, I thank you for the opportunity 

to speak with you today regarding this important issue of election 

integrity and accessibility. 

I am the director of Public Policy at People For the American 

Way and the director of federal legislation for Democracy Campaign on Voter Rights and Election Reform. People For is a national nonprofit social justice organization with more than 1 million 

members and supporters and more than a quarter century of commitment to nonpartisan citizen participation efforts. 

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Since our founding, People For has urged Americans to engage 

in civic participation and sought to empower those traditionally 

underrepresented at the polls, including young voters and people of 

color. At People For, election reform is our number one priority. 

And since the debacle of the 2000 election, People For Foundation 

and its key allies, including the NAACP and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law have led the well-known Election Protection Coalition to ensure that every citizen has the right 

to vote and to have that vote counted. This work, supplemented by 

litigation and People For’s legislative efforts, has provided our two 

organizations with a depth of expertise on how we must continue 

to reform our election process and to protect this most fundamental 

right to vote. 

The use of nonsecure and unauditable voting technology is particularly troubling because it can and has resulted in the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters across the country. This problem 

was highlighted as a result of the implementation of the 2006 Help 

America Vote Act deadlines which precipitated the widespread replacement of older voting technology. Thus, more voters and poll 

workers throughout the country used new voting systems in 2006 

than in any previous election. 

With so many counties using the new voting systems for the first 

time, the number of voting machine problems increased dramatically over 2004. In fact, complaints about voting machines outnumbered all other complaints to the Election Protection Hotline 

with voters in more than 35 states reporting various problems related to voting machines. 

People For supports H.R. 811 as a strong effort to change the 

status quo so that voters will have the confidence that their votes 

will be counted as cast. And we are grateful for your leadership, 

Madam Chair, on the issue of election reform, and in particular 

voting technology. We further thank the leadership of Congressman Rush Holt and Tom Petri and a multitude of others on both 

sides of the aisle for H.R. 811. 

This bill is notable for its efforts to accommodate not only the 

need for additional security in our elections, but also to demand appropriate accessibility for all voters. As a civil rights organization, 

and a close coalition partner of national organizations representing 

tens of thousands of voters with disabilities and minority language 

voters, including the National Disability Rights Network, 

MALDEF, the National Counsel of La Raza, and the Asian American Justice Center, People For is committed to ensuring that any 

new voting standards maintain the current accessibility protections 

afforded under HAVA, and all voting machines provide the necessary language translations in all steps of the voting process as 

required under section 203 of the Voting Rights Act. 

For this reason, People For supports the provisions of H.R. 811 

which allows States this flexibility to decide which types of election 

systems best meet the needs of its voting population, so long as 

that system is verifiable, auditable and secure. These provisions acknowledge that the best system in Utah may not be the best system in Los Angeles, and vice versa. 

H.R. 811’s commitment to both security and accessibility is to be 

commended and has earned endorsements from a diverse set of 

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civil rights and election integrity groups, including Common Cause, 

the Lawyers Committee, the Brennan Center, SEIU, and the NEA. 

While accessible systems that are not fully secure and auditable 

are unacceptable, secure election systems that are not accessible to 

all eligible voters likewise cannot be tolerated. American voters deserve and expect both security and accessibility. And while no language is perfect, H.R. 811 is to be commended for attempting to 

reach such a balance. My written testimony will expand further on 

our support for H.R. 811. 

Madam Chair, thank you again for your commitment to addressing this most pressing need of voting technology. As has been the 

case in the past three Federal elections, we expect that many of the 

races in 2008 will be very close and Americans deserve to know if 

their vote will be counted as cast and, if necessary, counted by fair 

and independent observers. 

As a member of the civil rights coalition that helped to draft the 

components of HAVA, I am vividly aware of the unfortunate problems that were caused by delayed financial support and oversight 

by Congress. Therefore, People For is committed to working with 

members to ensure that the proper funding is provided and that a 

reasonable implementation schedule is developed, so that election 

officials will have all necessary resources. And this must be done 

as soon as possible. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Ms. House follows:] 

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Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Gilbert. 

STATEMENT OF GEORGE GILBERT 

Mr. GILBERT. I would like to thank both the Chairwomen, the 

Ranking Member, and Mr. Ehlers for allowing at least one election 

official to speak to you today. I think I am the one that got selected 

because Conny McCormack couldn’t come this time. You are used 

to seeing her. A new face. 

Elections officials feel like we are the target in all of this. I hope 

I can be considered a trusted source in regard to not only the 19 

years of election experience I have had, but also the fact that I 

spent 6 years here on Capitol Hill working for Senator Culver and 

Senator Dodd. 

When I went to the Board of Elections in North Carolina in Guilford County, North Carolina, I was hired by a Republican Majority 

board, and throughout the 19 years I have served under both 

Democratic and Republican Majority boards. I left Washington with 

a very deep level of confidence and respect for our political system, 

and the last 19 years of my life have been dedicated to preserving 

that. 

That same attitude is held by the vast majority of elections officials in this country. It is our job to maintain the integrity and the 

accuracy and the openness of our elections system, and we are committed to that. 

I don’t know of any local election official who does not fully support these goals of accuracy, integrity, and security in elections. 

Contrary to the bill’s implications, our election process today contains substantial portions of these ingredients already. I would 

argue that it contains more than it ever has in the history of our 

democracy. 

Having said that, I will jump straight to my conclusions. I think 

the most effective thing that this Congress could do do improve all 

of these approaches to all of these goals is to promote rapid technological development to strengthen the areas of weakness in our current system. H.R. 811 not only fails to accomplish that, but it effectively forecloses that option. By mandating the manual counting of 

paper ballots as the ultimate official record, the bill effectively 

locks everyone into technology that became obsolete in the 19th 

century. Nothing has changed in the last hundred years that 

makes managing or counting paper any more secure or any more 

accurate than it was in the 1890s. 

The chief historical weakness of DRE voting systems has been 

the lack of a secure independent ballot record for each voter’s vote. 

The chief weakness of the paper voting systems, be they punch 

cards, optical scan or just a plain piece of paper, is the fact that 

there are frequent ambiguous votes cast on those ballots. 

In North Carolina in 2006, we tried the paper solution of an 

independent backup for electronic ballot records. Attachment 1 of 

my prepared testimony documents the rate—I would say not surprising—high rate of printer failure. We feel that we can reduce 

that rate, but no printer that I have ever heard of or anyone has 

ever conceived of is going to eliminate the failure of those printers 

to produce some of the ballot records. The experience in North 

Carolina in Attachment 2, I show that we lost roughly 2 percent 

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of our audit records as a result of that. To make the paper record 

the official ballot would simply throw out those ballots which we 

know voters legitimately cast. 

This experience was not isolated in North Carolina. Roughly half 

or more of the States have already adopted some form of a paper 

trail, and in every case the chief impact was to introduce another 

point of failure into the voting system. 

My attachments 3 and 4 document the ballot-marking errors. 

When we talk about the ambiguous votes that are cast on optical 

scan systems, one of the mantras in our industry is there is no 

such thing as a perfect voting system. And it is true. It always will 

be true. So I want you—if you guys will look at that and see that 

we don’t have a panacea that we can fall back on here. 

If you calculate the time it would take to count those ballots 

manually, which I have demonstrated also in my attachments, you 

basically see that what happened in Florida in 2000 is that they 

were asked to do the impossible; and that is, to count millions of 

votes by hand in too short a period of time. 

Ms. LOFGREN. We will make all those documents part of the 

record, thank you. Dr. Felten. 

Mr. FELTEN. Thank you Chairwoman Lofgren, Chairwoman 

Millender-McDonald, Ranking Member McCarthy, and Congressman Ehlers for the opportunity to testify today and give you my 

perspective on electronic voting and H.R. 811. 

Computers clearly have a role to play in our elections, but figuring out their appropriate and best use is a difficult question. We 

don’t need to choose between an all electronic system and a paper 

system. Instead, we should use computers and paper together so 

that each one can do what it does best and each can compensate 

for the drawbacks of the other. Such a system combines paper and 

electronic elements and can be easier to use, more reliable, and 

more secure than either an all electronic or all paper system. 

The starting point for understanding what kind of system we 

should use is to ask which things computers do well and which 

things are better done on paper. Computers do several things well. 

They report election results quickly. They can be accessible to disabled people. And they can help voters find and fix errors before 

the ballot is cast. Though these promises are not always met in 

practice, they are reason enough to give computers a role in our 

elections. 

But the one thing that today’s computers cannot do is provide a 

simple and transparent way to record and store votes. What happens inside an electronic voting machine is very complicated and 

cannot be inspected directly by the voter or in most cases, indeed, 

by independent experts. 

Because electronic records lack transparency, systems that rely 

on them are subject to security attacks that can modify votes 

undetectably, as with the the voting machine virus my colleagues 

and I demonstrated in Diebold touch-screen voting machines. Even 

in the absence of a security attack, problems in all electronic systems are very hard to diagnose. 

Our elections system must therefore be software independent, 

meaning that its accuracy does not rely on the correct functioning 

of any software system. Thus far, computer scientists haven’t found 

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any way to ensure the correctness of computer software programs, 

whether in a voting machine or in a personal computer. And instead of pretending that we are able to ensure the correctness of 

software, we need instead to have a system that records and counts 

the votes accurately even if the software malfunctions and the only 

practical way to do that today is to use paper ballots. 

By comparison to electronic records, paper ballots are much more 

transparent. A properly designed paper record conveys the voter’s 

intent clearly and the voter can confirm this by inspecting the 

paper record. Blind voters can do this with the help of assistive 

technology. And unlike a volatile electronic record, a durable paper 

record will not change unexpectedly and mysteriously. 

So looking at the strengths and weaknesses of electronic and 

paper-based systems, we can draw two conclusions. First, the primary record of a vote should be paper, because paper recording is 

more transparent and voter verifiable. 

Second, computers can sensibly be used for other parts of the voting process, such as entering the votes, providing a quick count 

subject to auditing, and helping reduce voter error. This is the 

blueprint that H.R. 811 follows. It requires the use of a durable 

voter-verified, private paper ballot. But beyond this, it gives States 

and localities a choice of whether and how to use computers in 

their elections. 

Different jurisdictions will use computers differently. Some will 

use a DRE touch screen with a ballot under glass paper trail. Some 

may use optical scan. Some may use ballot-marking devices. There 

are different kinds of paper trail systems, even within each of these 

categories. As long as there is a suitable ballot and appropriate 

technical standards are met, each jurisdiction can use its own approach. 

Computers can count and tabulate ballots quickly, so many jurisdictions will want to get quick electronic counts when the polls 

close. But because the paper ballots are the primary records, we 

need to make sure that the paper records and the electronic records 

match. The solution to this is a random audit in which we count 

a large enough random subset of the paper ballots and compare the 

results to the corresponding electronic count. This, again, is the approach taken by H.R. 811. 

There will be times, unfortunately, when the paper record is lost 

or corrupted. This will be very rare in a well-designed system, but 

we need to have a fallback in case that happens. That is why it 

is appropriate to say if there is a suitable showing with respect to 

problems or failures with the paper record, we can switch to the 

electronic and use it as the most accurate component. 

Improving our elections is going to cost some money, but I think 

this is a bargain if it brings our elections up to the level of security, 

reliability, accessibility, and privacy that all citizens deserve. Computers cannot only stop being a liability in election security, but 

they can become an asset if we use them correctly. And passing 

H.R. 811 would be an important step in realizing that promise. 

Thank you. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Gilbert follows:] 

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Ms. LOFGREN. And, finally, Dr. Norris. 

STATEMENT OF DON NORRIS 

Mr. NORRIS. Madam Chairperson, members of the committee, 

good morning. A very special good morning to Congressman Ehlers 

whom I haven’t seen in about 30 years. How are you? 

I am very pleased to give testimony this morning on H.R. 811. 

If I still lived in Grand Rapids, he would be my Congressman. 

In the available time I will address what I believe are serious 

limitations of the bill. My written testimony goes into greater detail. First let me say I think the intent of the bill to require voter 

verification of ballots cast is a noble and worthy one. Unfortunately, I think the methods set forth in the bill to achieve this is 

quite flawed—the paper trail requirement. 

In effect, as the bill is written it would require all the United 

States to return to using paper ballots in elections. It would put 

an end to electronic voting and it would significantly stifle or indeed kill innovation in voting technology. I have heard that from 

vendors. 

Paper ballots are notoriously susceptible to fraud. One of the 

main reasons we moved to machine voting in the 1900s was because of fraud with paper. Paper ballots can and frequently have 

been lost, stolen, or damaged. Entire ballot boxes lost, stolen, or 

stuffed. And I would expect that we would have other problems of 

a similar nature if we go back to paper again. 

As a political scientist—I am not a computer scientist but I have 

a long background in IT—I am far more concerned with the probability of election fraud with paper than with an electronic system, 

in part because it takes far less skill to steal a paper ballot, to 

counterfeit a paper ballot and stuff a ballot box than it does to diddle with a DRE. 

Ordinary people can tamper with paper. It takes specialized 

knowledge and skills about computer hardware and software to do 

that with electronic voting. 

One of the reasons that proponents give for wanting to return to 

paper ballots is that, quote, the people are demanding verification. 

In studies that I have done and studies that I have seen, the evidence does not support that claim. People—observable behavior, 

people go vote. They vote on the equipment that we are giving 

them. They do not indicate that they have a crisis of confidence in 

voting systems. And again there are surveys and observable voting 

behavior to demonstrate this. 

There is evidence, however, that voters do not want to and probably will not verify their votes when given the opportunity to do 

so, evidence from actual elections and from usability studies. Evidently people simply want to vote and get out of the voting booth. 

There are different ways to add paper to the election mix. One 

is the VVPAT and the another is the optical scan. Both have limitations. Indeed, as one of the speakers on this panel said, there is 

no perfect elections system, regardless of technology. 

Adding paper, whether VVPAT or optical scan, increases time, it 

increases complexity, it increases the difficulty of election administration and the probability of equipment malfunction and so on and 

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so forth. It also requires more training for people in the field who 

are actually managing elections. 

Mr. NORRIS. Printers regularly jam and fail, optical ballot systems can fail due to calibration problems, can and have failed due 

to calibration problems. 

I am not against, by the way, any of these technologies. I am 

merely pointing out that they all have limitations. 

Another reason proponents give for paper ballots is the need to 

audit elections and recount and do recounts. In nearly every election where recounts have been undertaken with paper ballots, the 

voting tally that is completed manually by human beings—that is, 

by us—produces inconsistent and sometimes conflicting findings. 

Think of Florida 2000, think of Washington State 2004. 

Further, the claim that electronic systems are inherently insecure is based on a faulty assumption that goes something like this: 

Yes, computers can be diddled, but the assumption is, given the 

right tools, the right amount of time and unfettered access to an 

electronic voting machine, a knowledgeable person can insert malicious software and produce erroneous results or do other bad 

things. It is a far-fetched scenario, and it is not something that has 

happened in an actual election to date. 

Security around electronic systems is far from perfect, but it can 

be improved and made very, very robust. 

I guess I have got just a few seconds left, so let me just wrap 

up by saying that I don’t believe there is a compelling technical 

reason to abandon electronic voting. I don’t think there is a compelling policy reason to require paper. I think it would be far better 

for this bill to require independent voter verification, but to remove 

all references to any particular technology and let the State and 

local governments and the marketplace figure out how best to do 

this. 

Thank you very much. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you. We are going to limit ourselves to 3 

minutes on the questions, so we can get to the final panel; and I 

will start with my 3 minutes, which is to Dr. Felten. 

I still talk about the testimony you gave before this committee 

last September, about how easy it is to hack a computer and the 

key from the minibar. I remember it was Benedict Arnold who beat 

George Washington in your display. 

Can you describe what the concern is as a computer scientist on 

these computer systems? 

Mr. FELTEN. Sure. The concern is that these things, being computers, will do what they are programmed to do; that is, they will 

do what the person who created the program wants them to do. 

And what we were able to demonstrate is that with as little as 

1 minute of access to a Diebold touch-screen voting machine and 

with this key which is for sale on the Internet, you can inject malicious software into a Diebold voting machine which causes it—that 

causes it to count the votes incorrectly. And I demonstrated this 

live, as you referred to, before the full committee at a hearing in 

the fall. 

So the concern is that these machines are vulnerable to tampering. And I would add that in every election since New Jersey 

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ing machines used in my precinct. I could not have lawfully opened 

them and tampered with them, but if I had I wanted to, I could 

have. 

Ms. LOFGREN. And how hard would it be for—I mean, is this creation of a virus so difficult that only—you know, really is not something to worry about in your judgment? Could you students do it? 

Mr. FELTEN. Yes. Students did—our students did, in fact, create 

the virus that I demonstrated. Any skilled computer scientist, computer programmer, would be able to do that. It is no more difficult 

than making a virus for a PC. There are many thousands of people, 

especially in your district, that have all of the knowledge. 

Ms. LOFGREN. I think I have heard from every one of them. 

With that, I am going to yield to Mr. McCarthy for his question. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Well, I thank you very much. 

To Mr. Gilbert, if I may: You are an elections officer, and I raise 

this question to the author of the bill because I do have some letters I want to submit for the record. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Without objection. 

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Mr. MCCARTHY. One is the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of Counties. In opposition, we had 

the Executive Director of—the National Association of Election Officials are opposed to this bill, and I am just trying to get your 

feedback as to what would you think the rationale—why the majority would be opposed. 

Mr. GILBERT. I think the majority of them are opposed to it on 

two grounds. One is the feasibility of actually executing what it 

purports to do and the second is the cost. 

We are very concerned that implementation date of 2008 would 

actually collapse the election system. We do not believe that it 

would be feasible nationwide to implement the kinds of changes, 

both procedural and technological, that this bill proposes by 2008. 

In terms of the paper trail, all you have to do is go out there and 

try to count paper ballots sometime, and you will see why we are 

opposed to it. We are the ones who do that. We have counted paper 

ballots by hand before, and we know how difficult—it is the most 

difficult aspect of conducting an election. 

You think we have complicated electronic technology; well, electronic technology actually simplifies things. It simplifies things at 

the precinct, it simplifies things for the administration of elections 

in the office. When you start throwing paper in, and particularly 

manual tabulation of paper, it becomes much, much more harder. 

And we know we can’t do it accurately; I think that is the fundamental reason. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Well, I thank the whole panel for their time. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Chairwoman. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. I, too, Madam Chair, have a letter from 

Conny McCormack. If I could please submit this for the record. 

Ms. LOFGREN. That will be added, without objection. 

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The CHAIRWOMAN. She too, has strong concerns about this bill 

and implementation. 

I also have a letter from Judy Duffy, the Chair of the Advocacy 

Committee of the League of Women Voters of the United States, 

raising her concerns as well. 

Ms. LOFGREN. That also will be added to the record. 

[The information follows:] 

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The CHAIRWOMAN. And, Madam Chair, with so many questions 

to raise and so little time, I am just going to ask for unanimous 

consent that my statement be submitted for the record. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Without objection, so ordered. 

[The statement of Ms. Millender-McDonald follows:] 

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Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Ehlers. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Madam Chair. I spent only a minute in 

my last round. I am going to spend a few more this time. 

First of all, Mr. Gilbert, thank you very much for your comments. 

It is what I have been saying all along and perhaps because I have 

had much the same experience you have had. 

Dr. Felten, have you ever sat down and counted ballots? Have 

you ever served as an election official? 

Mr. FELTEN. I have not, no. 

Mr. EHLERS. Okay. Let me, just to shorten things, express concern. 

I totally agree with the comments of Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Norris 

that paper lends itself to fraud. That is the history of elections with 

paper, and that is why we developed mechanical voting machines. 

Now we are in a different era; we are trying to develop good electronic voting machines. I agree with you that we haven’t done that 

yet, Dr. Felten, but I am confident we can do much better than we 

have, certainly with a mechanical lock, if nothing else. I am sure 

we can do a little better. 

I am surprised that you are willing to put much more faith in 

a mechanical system, such as a printer, unless voters are actually 

required to sit there and read through and verify. I would still put 

more confidence in the computer, on average, than I would on a 

mechanical printer. And I am just making that observation, and I 

am not trying to set up an argument here. 

I appreciate your comments, Mr. Norris. I do question your wisdom in leaving Michigan going to Maryland, but that is a separate 

issue. 

Mr. NORRIS. That alone should probably disqualify my testimony. 

Mr. EHLERS. You had a lot of common sense in your comments, 

and I appreciate it. I have no problem setting up the dual trail requirement. I do have a problem in seeing that the paper trail is the 

record for precisely the comments made by Mr. Gilbert. 

You know, I sat there and calculated—pardon me, counted ballots. It is a very unsure operation. Humans are not particularly 

good at that, and it is very, very difficult to get accurate results 

with any large number of ballots. 

So I am not—as I said before, I am not opposed to the bill, but 

I would like to make some changes in it, and I will propose those 

changes at some future time. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you, Mr. Ehlers. 

And thanks to this panel. It has been a long morning, but we appreciate your sticking with us to give us your advice. 

Now we will ask Noel Runyan, Dr. Harold Snider, Warren Stewart and Commissioner Gail Mahoney to join us. And we are going 

to ask—since we are going to be called to the floor for a considerable period of time in a very short period of time, I wonder if we 

could ask each of these witnesses to give their statement within 3 

minutes, as we have limited ourselves. Then we will know that we 

will get to hear everyone, and your official statements will be made 

part of the record. 

I would just note that Warren Stewart is the Policy Director for 

Vote TrustUSA, which is a nonpartisan organization, and he has 

been published in the Harvard Law & Policy Review. 

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Commissioner Gail Mahoney is from Jackson County, Michigan, 

the Chair of the National Association of Counties, an organization 

I once belonged to as a member of the Santa Clara County Board 

of Commissioners, and a distinguished leader in our Nation. 

And—I will now run through my cheat sheets here—Noel Runyan from my neck of the woods is an engineer, and he has designed 

and manufactured the Audapter speech synthesizer and has 

worked with the Santa Clara County Voter Access Advisory Committee; and Dr. Harold Snider, President of Access for the Handicapped. 

STATEMENTS OF NOEL RUNYAN, PRESIDENT, PERSONAL 

DATA SYSTEMS; DR. HAROLD SNIDER, ACCESS FOR THE 

HANDICAPPED, INC.; WARREN STEWART, POLICY DIRECTOR, 

VoteTrustUSA; AND COMMISSIONER GAIL W. MAHONEY, 

JACKSON COUNTY, MICHIGAN, CHAIR, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COUNTIES 

Ms. LOFGREN. We will call first on Noel Runyan for his abbreviated statement to be followed by Dr. Snider. 

STATEMENT OF NOEL RUNYAN 

Mr. RUNYAN. Madam Chairman—— Ms. LOFGREN. Could someone turn on the mike, please? Thank 

you so much. 

Mr. RUNYAN. Madam Chairman and members of the board, I 

would like to sincerely thank you for inviting me to testify today 

on improving access to voting systems. 

As an electrical engineer and computer scientist, I have spent 36 

years of working on human factors and access to systems for people 

with disabilities. I have also spent the last 4 years working on accessibility of voting systems. 

When the HAVA bill was introduced, I thought it was really exciting times for us because it would get rid of hanging-chads overvoting, and it would allow a lot of folks to have the kind of accessibility that we had learned to use on our own computer systems and 

other information systems. And they promised that the systems 

would be rigorously, federally tested to make sure that they were 

secure and accessible and accurate. 

So when I first went to vote in Santa Clara on the Sequoia electronic voting machines about 3 years ago, I was very disappointed 

when they—after 45 minutes of diligently working, calling tech 

support, poll workers were not able to get the system working with 

audio output so that I could use it, I had to have somebody else 

vote for me. 

Out of five elections now, in which I have used the Sequoia voting system, in three of those, the poll workers were never able to 

get the system working by themselves. And in fact, in one of them, 

my wife asked for and was loaned the manual so that she could 

read the manual and figure out how to get the system working 

with audio for me. It seems that we shouldn’t all have to have a 

very brilliant wife that is a computer scientist to go along with us 

to vote. 

So I got very involved in studying the accessibility of these systems, and very concerned about both their access and security; and 

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found that there were a lot of folks that weren’t getting full access 

to these systems, in some cases because they were too complicated 

for poll workers and, in others, because of very limited design capabilities for providing accessibility—accessibility for people with 

physical disabilities, cognitive disabilities, or with special or alternative language needs. 

And, as an example, many of them did not even have simultaneous audio and visual or large print magnification, so important 

for so many elderly folks that need to use it. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Right. Mr. Runyan, we are going to have to ask 

you to wrap up so we can hear all four of you. 

Mr. RUNYAN. I will try to wrap up very quickly here. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you. 

Mr. RUNYAN. But as we found, the systems needed to be made 

more secure, and so we ended up having to look at using paper 

which was not accessible. 

It turns out that over the years, now we have developed accessible ballot marking systems and that those are usable and I would 

like to submit both my report—my access report and a letter today, 

which we have had several people join onboard to say, we as people 

with disabilities do support accessible paper voting systems. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Runyan, we will make both those statements 

part of the official record. And now we will call on Dr. Snider. 

[The statement of Mr. Runyan follows:] 

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STATEMENT OF HAROLD W. SNIDER, PH.D. 

Mr. SNIDER. Thank you, Madam Chairman. It is a privilege and 

an honor to speak before the subcommittee, and I am very grateful 

for your invitation to do so. 

First of all, I want to repeat what I said to Congressman Holt 

outside this hearing, not since the passage of the Americans With 

Disabilities Act have we had a Member of this House reach out to 

the disability community to take input on an issue as we have had 

with Congressman Holt on H.R. 811. 

I said to him that I have substantial disagreements with him 

about H.R. 811, that are outlined in my testimony; and I will look 

forward to involving in engagement with his staff to try to work 

some of those out. We may be able to do it, we may not, but there 

is a good-faith effort certainly on my part and I am sure on his part 

to get that done. So I commend him strongly for his efforts. 

The real problem with H.R. 811 is, it unnecessarily slows down 

the process of enfranchisement of people with disabilities into the 

voting process by requiring that DRE, touch-screen, machines also 

generate a verifiable paper trail that can be verified by disabled 

and blind, visually impaired voters. 

In the 30 years that I voted in almost 30 elections, two every 2 

years or so between 1972 and 2002, I met more illiterate and ignorant poll workers who couldn’t accommodate my needs and who 

discriminated against me in the most horrible ways you could 

imagine. And HAVA changed the playing field for me and for other 

people with disabilities. 

While I was an employee of the Republican National Committee, 

I worked with disabled voters who were completely apathetic about 

the voting process because accessibility was denied. 

The problem with H.R. 811 is, it slows down the implementation 

of the provisions of HAVA to the extent that people with disabilities won’t get accessible voting until perhaps the middle or end of 

the next decade of this century. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Dr. Snider, you only have about 30 seconds left. 

I wanted to warn you. 

Mr. SNIDER. And what concerns me most, people don’t have confidence in the technology that exists in the 21st century. 

I hope that the Congress will keep the promise of HAVA while 

fixing some of the problems which exist. 

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Snider follows:] 

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Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Stewart. 

STATEMENT OF WARREN STEWART 

Mr. STEWART. Madam Chairwoman, distinguished ranking member, members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to address you on this very important hearing on H.R. 811. 

The most critical components of this bill are the requirement for 

a voter-verified paper ballot of every vote cast; the establishment 

of routine random hand-counted audits; the requirement that the 

audits be completed before the Federal race is certified; and the increased transparency and public oversight of the testing of voting 

machines that the bill promotes. 

Responding to widespread concern about the design of existing 

audit trail printers, H.R. 811 would require that the paper records 

be printed on durable paper capable of withstanding multiple 

counts and recounts; and the bill also would require a verification 

that the voter’s selections on the paper record be accessible to voters with disabilities. All of these requirements are more—are desperately needed to restore, protect and preserve the integrity of our 

elections; and it is absolutely critical they be implemented in time 

for the 2008 elections. 

It is essential that the authorization in this bill be sufficient to 

cover the cost to counties of implementation. I have developed a 

cost projection to determine the authorization necessary for States 

to meet the proposed requirements, section 2 in H.R. 811; and I 

would be happy to discuss that with the members of the committee 

at any time. In preparing my cost projection, I organized the Nation’s approximately 187,000 voting precincts into three broad categories based on the voting system employed last November for inprecinct voting. 

In the first category were those precincts in which voters marked 

paper ballots by hand, or with ballot marking devices provided for 

compliance with the disability access requirements of HAVA. There 

were just over 46,000 such precincts in 35 States, including every 

precinct in 17 States. These precincts would not be required to 

make any changes to comply with the requirements of 811. 

In the second category were those precincts where all voters 

voted on direct recording DRE voting systems, just over 74,000 precincts in 27 States. I’m sorry about all the numbers. To meet the 

requirements of 811, these precincts would need to either replace 

their entire voting system with a paper-ballot ballot marker system 

or retrofit their DREs with compliant durable and accessible voter 

verified paper audit printers. 

Finally, there were precincts in which most voters used a paper 

ballot system and a DRE was provided merely for HAVA compliance, and that is about 50,000 precincts in 23 States. 

There would be basically three approaches for precincts in the 

second two categories to meet the durability and accessibility requirements of 811. One approach would be to replace DRE systems 

with paper ballot optical scan systems and ballot markers. In all 

DRE precincts, this would require the purchase of one paper-based 

optical scan scanner per precinct and one ballot marker. In mixed 

precincts, they would only require the purchase of a ballot marking 

device. 

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The language of H.R. 811 allows the use of DREs, but only if 

they are equipped to provide every voter with the opportunity to 

review a software independent record of their votes. Technology required for such printer exists, but there are currently no add-on 

printers for DREs that meet these requirements. 

A third approach would be to take advantage of the accessible 

features allowed by the computer interfaces of DRE and attach 

printers that would generate durable paper ballots that could then 

be scanned for counting and also for the special needs verification 

for voters that need them. 

I am going to be very quick. 

I base my projection on a cost average—on an average cost of 5,000 per precinct optical scanner and $5,000 for ballot marking 

device. It is impossible to anticipate with certainty the cost of compliant add-on printers for existing DREs since they are not currently on the market, but each such printer would likely cost less 

than the cost of a precinct scanner. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Stewart—— Mr. STEWART. I will be quick, sorry. 

However, DRE voting systems require multiple voting machines 

in each precinct, compared to only one scanner. So the costs are 

roughly the same. 

Let me just jump to the critical question here. 

Ms. LOFGREN. The study would be very useful and we would like 

to make that a part of the record if we could. 

Mr. STEWART. Just quickly to conclude. Based on my research, 

the costs of bringing every precinct in the country into compliance 

with the requirements of 811 would be more than double the $3 

million that is currently authorized in the bill; and in order to ensure that States have everything they need to meet the requirements, I urge the subcommittee to increase the bill’s authorization 

to $1 billion. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Stewart follows:] 

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Ms. LOFGREN. And now we are going to turn to our last witness. 

Commissioner Mahoney, thank you so much for being here. 

STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER GAIL W. MAHONEY 

Ms. MAHONEY. Thank you and to both Chairwomen and to Ranking Member McCarthy, and certainly to Congressman Ehlers from 

the great State of Michigan where I come from. 

My name is Gail Mahoney, and I am representing the National 

Association of Counties today, all of your constituents back home; 

and it is my pleasure to be here and to have the opportunity to 

speak for NACo. To be the cleanup woman at the end, I really 

should be allowed just a couple extra minutes, but as long as——

Ms. LOFGREN. Until the bell rings. 

Ms. MAHONEY. My testimony is in the record and all of the documents that we have asked to be entered into the record. I am just 

going to applaud, first of all, your leadership and concern for trying 

to ensure public confidence in our democracy. 

I do support the goals of H.R. 811. Every voter must have confidence that their vote counts, that the candidates that they have 

chose will be counted, and that those things can be audited. We do 

support it. 

But the main thing is that the intent is going to totally bring results that we don’t want. I think voter confidence will totally be 

eroded, because this bill, being rushed at this point, will cause people to think less of the voter system if we rush this for 2008. 

There is no way the counties have the money; it is an unfunded 

mandate. 

I am from the great State of Michigan, like I said, and certainly 

the State of Michigan cannot fund again. We do use optical scan 

in Michigan, but right now there are counties that have the DREs. 

There is no way by 2008 that those systems can be changed to 

meet this deadline. 

So we certainly do not want a deja vu to occur. The deadlines 

that proceed the standards, the National Institute of Standards 

and Technology would be issuing guidelines for experimental new 

forms and ballot scanning technology 2 years after it reaches the 

polling places in America, which requires starting to use the equipment before it has even been mandated. 

So we just want to ensure public confidence in the next generation of voting equipment. We urge you to try to slow down this legislation and give us an opportunity to have HAVA to work as it 

was intended. And had HAVA had the support financially and the 

time frame that was originally intended, we would not be here 

today. We would not be attempting to scrap billions of dollars of 

equipment that cannot feed your constituents back home. 

So, certainly, the waste of tax dollars. We will not be ready. 

And so we would just like finally to urge you to—a uniform ballot 

and standard voting equipment would be impractical. It will stifle 

innovation for the future and greatly magnify the efforts of unintended consequences. 

Our Nation should not look for a single dramatic solution, but for 

a sustained effort to make improvements and eliminate sources of 

error. 

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Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before you 

today on behalf of NACo. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you so very much. 

[The statement of Ms. Mahoney follows:] 

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Ms. LOFGREN. And we are going to limit ourselves again, if we 

could, to 3 minutes of questions; and I will ask Mr. Runyan, who 

is from my county, what you would recommend be deployed in 

those precincts that have paperless DREs currently deployed. 

Mr. RUNYAN. What would be deployed in terms of Holt or what 

would be—— Ms. LOFGREN. What do you recommend in terms of accessibility 

as well as accountability? 

Mr. RUNYAN. Well, I think, as Secretary of State Debra Bowen 

had pointed out, that one of the better solutions today is a blended 

solution with optical scan and accessible ballot marking systems; 

and that would be, as is in my report, my general recommendation 

for most areas. 

Ms. LOFGREN. And do those systems already exist? 

Mr. RUNYAN. Yes. Right. There are systems like this. They have 

been tried. They are certified and they have been used in several 

different States. 

A good model is New Mexico, where they completely threw out 

the DRE machines and replaced them; and it was actually cheaper 

than what they were going to have to do to upgrade their systems. 

Ms. LOFGREN. I am going to yield to Mr. McCarthy in view of the 

time. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. I just want to thank all the panelists for coming 

and testifying. I do want to thank the Chairwoman for holding this 

examination of H.R. 811 and for the panels that we had earlier this 

week and last week. 

I think something that I take from this, kind of from all the witnesses, whether they support or oppose, there is still work that 

needs to be done on this bill. 

Ms. MAHONEY. Absolutely. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. For it to be more money, for it to be what you 

mandate. And it sounds like everybody wants to work towards it, 

that, yes, there is a place people want to get to, but it doesn’t seem 

like this bill is done yet. And we have an election fast approaching. 

And what is an interesting point—and one of our first individuals that was testifying today was the Governor of Florida, and as 

he begins to move on the improvements he has made down there, 

regardless of where this bill goes, he is moving up his election. And 

to make a dramatic shift prior to an election, especially when you 

have a Presidential election—you have a lot of the States moving 

their primary up—I do think we have a goal of what to work towards. 

The bill has some concepts in there I think people want to work 

on, and I look forward to working with everyone, trying to produce 

a bipartisan bill and something that everybody can agree to. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Chairwoman. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. First of all, I would like to have everyone who 

is here today know that this panel has submitted a letter to the 

appropriators, asking for the remaining $800 million; and of course, 

as we have heard today, that may just be a drop in the bucket. But 

at least this committee has gone forward with the whole notion of 

trying to get the rest of the money from HAVA. 

Mr. Stewart, in your testimony, you stated that the jurisdictions 

would be able to implement these changes before 2008. What are 

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you basing that on? Whereas Conny McCormack, the Registrar Recorder/County Clerk in my County of Los Angeles, sent me a letter 

stating that mandating major changes to the 2008 election cycle 

would invite significant problems. 

Mr. STEWART. I would point to the fact that Governor Crist is intending to make changes which are like the H.R. 811 changes before his primary in February. The fact that New Mexico switched 

from DRE voting to optical scan in the course of about 2 months, 

it is not optimal. They received their scanners in August of 2006, 

and they were using them in early voting in October. 

I would point to—in my written testimony, I make reference to 

the former EAC Commissioner, Ray Martinez, who spoke to the Financial Services Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee a 

couple of weeks ago and described his experience. He was engaged 

as a consultant for the State of New Mexico in overseeing that implementation. It wasn’t optimal time, but they did succeed and had 

a successful election in doing that. 

I would also look at other States that have made that change relatively quickly. I would say, moving to a less complicated system 

like an optical scan system, which is easier for poll workers to be 

trained to use, would also facilitate the implementation of this bill. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. Just a statement: Commissioner Mahoney did 

say that there would be challenges if this bill would come into play 

for 2008, especially for county election officers. 

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Ehlers. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

First of all, I want to apologize to the panel for rushing your testimony. We don’t like it that way, but the floor rules around here. 

When we have to be down there to vote, we have to be down there 

to vote. 

I do appreciate the comments and the testimony offered. We had 

a couple of hearings on this bill last year. We have now had this 

hearing. I think we have heard ample testimony. It is pretty clear 

what the different individuals and groups think, and it is also very 

clear that this is something that is going to be very difficult to rush 

just because of the difficulty of implementing something like this 

very quickly, particularly since we haven’t even ended paying for 

the last changes made. 

Given our current budget situation, it is going to be hard to 

scrape up a lot of money out of the Congress to rush this through. 

That doesn’t mean it can’t be done, but it is going to take State and 

local money to do it if you want it done by that date. The direction, 

I think, is pretty clear. 

As I mentioned earlier, I will be preparing some amendments or 

a substitute to try to include a number of the comments that have 

been made here. Thank you to all of you for being here. Thank you, 

especially, Commissioner Mahoney; we appreciate you being here 

and representing the great State of Michigan. 

Actually, I am amazed at how well we have done in Michigan 

under HAVA with the optical scan. The only problem I know of last 

year was caused by the incompetence of a certain city clerk who 

then proceeded to lose her own election. So incompetence has its 

own reward. 

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So we appreciate the work you have done. We appreciate your 

comments and that applies to everyone who is here. Thank you 

very much. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRWOMAN. Madam Chair, I have a point of personal 

privilege. 

Thank you so much for this hearing today. We had excellent panelists, and I agree with the Ranking Member of the full Committee 

in saying they had to rush through, but we got the idea. So thank 

you very much for this. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much. And I just appreciate everyone who has taken their time to share their expertise. 

And I would note, Mr. Stewart, the analysis that you have done 

will be enormously helpful. I am not aware of anyone else who has 

done that, and we don’t actually have a hard copy of it, so if we 

could get that from you, that will be so useful. 

Mr. STEWART. Would you prefer it on disk or by e-mail? Anyway, 

I can work it out with your staff. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you very much and thanks to all of you. 

The subcommittee will hold the record open for 5 days for members andwitnesses who wish to submit additional materials in writing. 

And, again, thank you so much. The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:17 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

[The information follows:] 

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Insert: 

I am writing to ask you to oppose the Holt Bill in its entirety. HR 811 contains 

many dangerous provisions that, if implemented, will surbvert our democratic processes and our ability to have citizen oversight over our elections: 

• It has a huge unfunded mandate (estimated $4 billion to pay for the text 

conversion device alone) that will send our cities and towns deeply into debt. 

• It mandates nonexistent, untested and uncertified equipment (text conversion device) for use in the 2008 elections. 

• It makes permanent the EAC and thereby centralizes electoral regulation 

and control, giving unprecedented and undemocratic power to the White House 

over the nation’s elections. 

The EAC as an entity composed of four presidential appointees, even in an officially non-regulatory role wields inappropriate power over our national elections 

through its voting equipment certification program and its ‘‘voluntary’’ voting system guidelines. According to a recent GAO report, up to 44 states require compliance with federal voting system guidelines, which effectively makes the EAC program regulatory. In addition to the affront this manifests to our concept of decentralized power, the EAC voting system guidelines and certification program place 

an emphasis on technology over democracy, proposing high tech, high cost, pie in 

the sky solutions that are unworkable and will destabilize our election systems nationwide. This is a national security threat we can not afford. The EAC must be 

abolished per the HAVA directive to sunset it in 2006. Any necessary and positive 

functions it serves can be reassigned as shown below. 

The untenable and unworkable nature of the Holt Bill proposals are evidenced in 

its universal rejection by all state and local election officials as represented by the 

National Association of Secretaries of State, the National Conference of State Legislators, and the National Association of Counties. They unilaterally understand the 

unfunded costs required to implement this bill, the unrealistic timelines, and the 

threat it represents to state sovereignty. 

One analysis indicates that in order for our state to comply with the EAC-recommended and Holt-mandated text conversion requirement, it would have to do 

some or all of the following in time for the 2008 elections: 

• Completely redesign its ballot, possibly in a technology-friendly but nonvoter-friendly manner 

• Revise its election laws to support the new ballot design and technology 

• Purchase entirely new election equipment for the entire state 

The destabilizing effect these actions would have on the state of New Hampshire 

and the ability of its citizens to exercise their Constitutional right to vote in free, 

fair, and open elections would be multiplied as each state across the nation attempts 

to comply with these requirements according to its own particular election configurations. 

Although I am not your constituent, I am asking you to represent the nation by 

opposing this bill completely, to not offer any amendments, but rather to work with 

us on better and more realistic solutions that will further election integrity for our 

nation. 

Suggestions for alternate legislation may be found in the references below. 

Sincerely, 

NANCY TOBI. 

The EAC’s functions, as described on its website, are listed here in bulleted format, with suggested handover to other entities in ALL CAPS: 

* Generate technical guidance on the administration of federal elections.—HAND 

OVER TO NIST & STANDARDS BOARD 

* Produce voluntary voting systems guidelines.—HAND OVER TO NIST & 

STANDARDS BOARD 

* Research and report on matters that affect the administration of federal elections.—HAND OVER TO STANDARDS BOARD & CITIZENS GROUP 

* Otherwise provide information and guidance with respect to laws, procedures, 

and technologies affecting the administration of Federal elections.—HAND OVER 

TO STANDARDS BOARD & CITIZENS GROUP 

* Administer payments to States to meet HAVA requirements.—HAND OVER TO 

GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION 

* Provide grants for election technology development and for pilot programs to 

test election technology.—ELIMINATE THIS FUNCTION 

* Manage funds targeted to certain programs designed to encourage youth participation in elections.—HAND OVER TO FEC 

* Develop a national program for the testing, certification, and decertification of 

voting systems.—HAND OVER TO NIST & STANDARDS BOARD 

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* Maintain the national mail voter registration form that was developed in accordance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), report to Congress 

every two years on the impact of the NVRA on the administration of federal elections, and provide information to States on their responsibilities under that law.—

HAND OVER TO FEC 

* Audit persons who received federal funds authorized by HAVA from the General 

Services Administration or the Election Assistance Commission.—HAND OVER TO 

GAO 

* Submit an annual report to Congress describing EAC activities for previous fiscal year.—HAND OVER AS APPROPRIATE TO ENTITIES PICKING UP FUNCTIONS AS DESCRIBED ABOVE 

References: 

Request by Voters: Alternate legislative recommendation http:// 

www.wethepatriots.org/HAVA/requestbyvoters.pdf 

Concept proposal for federal election reform legislation http:// 

electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/EI-FedLegProposal-v2.pdf 

Nancy Tobi podcast interview with Bob Fitrakis of Ohio’s FreePress.org: 

(Audio podcast: Why mandated equipment in Holt does not exist and will not 

exist in time for their mandated 2008 timeline and what this means to the nation) http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/3661 

Why the Election Assistance Commission must be abolished: Centralized executive power and bloodless coups http:// 

www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/3657 

What’s wrong with the NEW Holt Bill (HR 811)? (13 bulleted points) 

http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/3572 

National Association of Counties and National Conference of State Legislatures urge Congress to oppose federal election reform (why state and local election officials and legislators oppose the bill) http:// 

www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/3687 

NASS Approach to Federal Legislation (why top state election officials oppose 

Holt) http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/3687 

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