The mission of the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition is to restore public ownership and oversight of elections, and to ensure the fundamental right of every American citizen to vote and to have each vote counted as intended in a secure, transparent, impartial, and independently verified election process.
UPDATE: Election Verification Legislation in Oregon (HB 3270)
Submitted by Deb on Sun, 04/15/2007 - 6:56pm.
Questions About the Bill and Verification Procedure
April 2, 2007
UPDATE
UPDATE
The Oregon Voter Rights Coalition would like to thank everyone who contacted State Representatives to voice support for HB 3270, a bill to require mandatory verification of machine-tallied election results by hand counting a sample of paper ballots. We have been told that the outpouring of grassroots support for this bill made a difference. Your voices were heard!
The Oregon Voter Rights Coalition also thanks the sponsor of the bill, Representative Mitch Greenlick, and co-sponsors Jeff Merkley, Speaker of the House, and Representatives Phil Barnhart, Peter Buckley, Ben Cannon, Brian Clem, Paul Holvey, and Chuck Riley.
Questions About the Bill and Verification Procedure
In their testimony at the hearing for HB 3270 on March 19th, Oregon's County Clerks and Director of Elections stated that there were too many unanswered questions under the bill about how an election verification system would be implemented and how much it would cost. The Oregon Voter Rights Coalition shares these concerns. In response, we have offered the House Elections, Ethics and Rules (EER) Committee a proposal on a verification procedure for consideration as an amendment to the current bill. Our proposal is for a statistically valid election verification procedure that we developed and have been promoting to Oregon election officials for the last couple of years. Our methodology has also been peer reviewed and accepted by professional statisticians who are either consultants to Oregon election officials or who are nationally recognized election integrity advocates.
Our proposed methodology specifically addresses the concerns expressed by Oregon election officials regarding the time, effort and cost concerns. Most importantly, our verification methodology will assure all Oregonians that the certified election results for statewide races are accurate. Under this verification procedure, if the hand-counted sample of paper ballots indicates that the machine-tallied results may not be accurate, then a full hand recount will be conducted to ensure that the certified election results accurately reflect the will of the people. For more information on this method, click here.
Open Source Election Software?
During the recent hearing, one of the people who testified in support of verification of machine tallies was a member of the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition with expertise in computers and open source software. While not part of the current bill, members of the House EER Committee expressed an interest in the use of open source election software. The Oregon Voter Rights Coalition also supports open source software, however, we note that machine tallies produced by open source election software would still require independent verification because even open source software can contain errors in the code.
VIDEO: “Protecting Your Vote”
