Holt II an abysmal failure

Written by: John Burik on Feb 9, 2007 12:29 AM EST

Below are some critical points against Holt II.  DREs are left in place, and at most we'll get a hand count of ten percent of their output.  That means we'll be stuck with the suspect machine count as the "official count" regardless that Holt II "says" the paper record is the official one.

I have no objection to the use of DREs as an assistive device for visually impaired or non-English speaking voters, but it needs to output a paper ballot which is counted.  I have an adamant objection to votes being counted on DREs which is the reality with Holt II.  

Sec. II (A)(i) states "The voting system shall require the use of or produce an individual voter-verified paper ballot . . . " (p. 2).  But at (B)(III)(iii) "the individual permanent paper ballots shall be the true and correct record of the votes cast and shall be used as the official ballots for purposes of any recount or audit [emphasis added]. . ." (pp. 4-5).  Thus, while Holt can say the paper ballot is the ballot of record, only in the case of a recount or audit will we know it has been counted.  That means the vote count we get on election night and the certified count will in reality be the machine count.  That's what we have now.

Sec. 322 spells out mandatory audit procedures for several vote margin scenarios, 10% random audit for a margin less than one percent; 5% for margins greater than 1% and less than 2%; and 3% audit for margins 2% or greater (pp. 35-36).  But Sec. 327 exempts from these requirements those elections subject to an automatic recount under state law.  In Ohio that means federal elections decided by 0.5% or less will not use the Holt audit method, but follow state law.  Thus, the closest elections, in which we would be most interested in a valid audit, will not have one.

In brief, paper ballot and audit are great ideas, but in most cases (1) we will get only the machine count, and (2) the closest elections will not be audited.  Those are significant limitations in Holt II.

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