Ban Touchscreen Voting

I urge you to co-sponsor Rep. Rush Holt’s Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act to ban unverifiable touchscreen voting.

This bill requires verifiable and accessible voting systems in federal elections with paper ballots marked by voters by hand or through the use of non-tabulating ballot marking devices.

It will ensure that voters in every precinct across the United States are guaranteed the right in a federal election to cast their votes using paper ballots. It will require election audits for every federal election where the winning candidate receives less than 80 percent of the vote.

The past several election cycles have demonstrated that electronic voting systems present a serious threat to the integrity of our elections. Touchscreen machines (DRE’s) have proven to be unreliable and insecure for the counting and recording of votes. Further, touchscreens repeatedly malfunction during elections, causing long lines and disenfranchising thousands of voters. And touchscreens provide no opportunity to conduct a meaningful recount or audit of an election. As a result, voters throughout the country have lost confidence in the accuracy of reported electoral outcomes in jurisdictions using touchscreens.

More than a century ago, the United States Supreme Court stated in the case of Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 370 (1886), that the right to vote is “a fundamental political right” which is “preservative of all rights.” The Holt Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act is a critical measure for helping to protect this most basic right.