While it’s true that HR-811 does not provide an air-tight solution to the potential for electronic voting machines to report erroneous polling results, its core purpose, that of a meaningful audit that will catch errant software releases and voting machine models red-handed, is still intact, stronger than it was in Holt’s earlier bills.

Auditing doesn’t prevent fraud, but it will undoubtedly bring it to light. If there’s anywhere near the level of faultiness and/or fraud in these machines as most readers of this publication, myself included, think there is, HR-811 will create the political climate — through mass public awareness of the cancer of electronic voting machines — that proponents of much stronger controls would need in order to have sweeping changes find their way through a largely out-of-touch, influence-drenched Congress.

(My favorite “control”, by the way, is Kucinich-promoted Canadian-style Hand-Count Paper Ballots… I just believe it’s only an audit guarantee such as HR-811 that will pave the way for that kind of sweeping change.)

That’s why HR-811’s supporters are still with it, despite a conference process that seems to have had as many vendors as issue advocates present.

Some bills in the Senate need improvement- but don’t forget about Count Every Vote Act’s excellent voting-system language; given its other provisions, it won’t move, but the Senators who cosponsored it are certainly a sign of hope. And remember how Iowa’s Senate File 369 started? As Senate Study Bill 1104, bill that would add inadequate printers and still make the electronic count the ballot of record! The legislative process can improve bills as well as weaken them as they move forward.

The votes in Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia et al desperately need a voter-verifiable record and audits in 2008. We can’t give up yet.