By Jennifer Cohn
May 24, 2019
Synopsis of Goals [from article]
1. Hand marked paper ballots as a primary voting system: no touchscreen voting machines, no barcodes on ballots, no ‘hybrids,’ no machine-marked paper ballots from ballot marking devices (except for voters with disabilities).
2. Well-maintained non-hybrid BMDs without barcodes that produce full-face paper ballots (not summaries) for voters with disabilities.
3. Transparent and secure chain of custody: digital ballot images preserved and published, published chain of custody records.
4. Public hand audits (or full public hand counts) for all races.
5. No wireless modems or remote access
6. Posted poll tapes and reported results (distinguishing early voting vs election day vs. absentee).
7. Paper voter rolls as backup at the polling places.
8. Begin moving away from proprietary equipment.
9. Vendor background checks.
10. Persuade Congress to pass the PAVE Act (now called the SAFE Act), which is endorsed by LWV, Common Cause, the Brennan Center, the National Election Defense Coalition, OSET, and others.
11. Require public disclosure of any and all attempted and successful breaches of election systems.
12. Require that voter registrations include intrusion detection software.
Note: This piece was updated on August 2, 2019 to indicate that the PAVE Act is now called the SAFE Act and that the SAFE Act has passed the House.
13. Require that voter registration systems include logging capabilities to track modifications to the database.
