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April 19, 2004
Forward:
This proposal is the result of a lot of work! The challenge posed by the
merging of two complex worlds, voting and computer systems, should not
be underestimated. This proposal has gone through months of revision and
through 7 states and some local approval processes. In addition, it
includes feedback from noted www.verifiedvoting.org
expert David Dill, a computer security professor at Stanford who is
focused on this issue full time as well as our Brent White, who has
substantial expertise in election systems.
Proposal: Proposed Resolution for Voter-Verified
Paper Ballot Audit Trail
WHEREAS, a pillar of Green values is grassroots democracy and the
hundreds of thousands of Greens who are working to grow this fledgling
party hold the right to vote as inviolate;
WHEREAS, the integrity of the vote is threatened by the new touch screen
voting technology which has been shown to have numerous security
vulnerabilities to human and programming error, equipment malfunction,
and malicious tampering;
WHEREAS, state legislatures are updating voting equipment in response to
the federal Helping America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2001 which requires
upgrades in voting equipment by 2006;
WHEREAS, some states and counties are moving toward or have already
installed paperless electronic voting machines in spite of research,
expert opinion, the lack of national technical standards and real life
election debacles showing the integrity of voting is at high risk from
touch screen voting machines;
WHEREAS, some of the manufacturers of voting equipment are highly
partisan raising the appearance of, if not actual conflicts of interest,
e.g., Diebold Corporation has demonstrated blatant conflict of interests
and ethical lapses given the 23 senior managers which have contributed
to the Republican Party or the Bush campaign; the CEO of which has said
he hopes to "deliver Ohio to Bush", add to this illegal
installation of uncertified software, manipulative pricing, poor product
performance;
WHEREAS, the use of secret proprietary software is unacceptable in a
democracy, especially when that software is routinely unavailable to
state election or elected officials, and under any circumstances ceding
the responsibility to collect and count the vote to a private
corporation is unacceptable;
WHEREAS, the disabled community has legitimate desire for full access to
a secret and independent vote; and the technology exists today to build
an electronic voting machine that incorporates a voter-verified paper
audit trail that is accessible to vision-impaired voters;
WHEREAS, paper ballots are used in the UK, Canada, India and other
sophisticated democracies;
WHEREAS, FOR COUNTIES AND STATES WHERE TOUCH SCREEN VOTING MACHINES ARE
ALREADY IN PLACE, a voter-verified paper audit trail is the best
protection available to guarantee that an individual's vote has been
both recorded and counted correctly by an electronic voting machine
(such as a touch screen) especially when coupled with random audits
based on the paper trail;
WHEREAS, four states (Nevada, California, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin)
have already required and guaranteed such a paper trail for their own
citizens;
In jurisdictions where touch screen electronic voting machines are
already in use, the Green Party of the United States resolves to support
the growing national movement of citizens in calling for strict
implementation, required use, and required random manual recounts of a
voter-verifiable paper ballot audit trail, by which we mean a permanent
paper record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy by the voter
before the vote is submitted, and is difficult or impossible to alter
after it has been checked.
The Green Party of the United States calls for full enfranchisement of
all voters including language minorities, and those with disabilities.
The Green Party of the United States also calls for "publicly
disclosed" election software that conforms to the highest public
interest standards for ensuring the integrity and trustworthiness of the
vote.
Sponsored by:
Maryland Green Party
Washington State Green Party
Progressive Party of Missouri
Maine Green Independent Party
New York Green Party
New Jersey Green Party
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