Contact your members of Congress while they are home between now and April 13 and tell them to protect our right to vote privately and independently in next year's Presidential elections. The leading election reform bill, introduced by Congressman Rush Holt, H.R. 811, includes an unrealistic deadline for every voting machine to produce an accessible voter-verifiable paper ballot by next year. Tell your Congressional representatives to move that paper ballot deadline back to allow time for new voting systems to be developed, certified for use in elections, and funded.

When the Holt bill's paper ballot requirement is coupled with the access requirements of the Help America Vote Act, it will require election officials to purchase technology that does not currently exist. The Holt bill seems to acknowledge this problem because it requires the federal government to study how best to make it's voter-verifiable paper ballots accessible to voters with a wide range of disabilities, and requires the government to report on its findings by January of 2010. In the absence of these findings, how can election officials move forward with a 2008 deadline for accessible paper ballots?

BACKGROUND

Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) introduced H.R. 811, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act on February 7 of this year. This bill currently has 200 cosponsors and bipartisan support. The bill is expected to pass the House, and is considered the leading election reform vehicle that is moving in this Congress. It was slated for mark up in the House Committee on Administration last Thursday, but the mark up was postponed at the last minute. We anticipate that the bill will be marked up and sent to the House floor for a vote soon after Congress returns from their current recess. Once it passes the House, we anticipate that the Senate will want to act quickly on a parallel piece of legislation.

The Holt bill would amend the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) by making a number of major changes to the nation's elections system. It requires all changes to be in place for the primaries in next year's presidential election. If enacted into law, the Holt bill will require that all polling places use equipment in the 2008 presidential race that can produce an accessible, voter-verifiable paper ballot. The bill includes other requirements that would substantially change election practices, but for purposes of this alert we are focusing on the paper ballot requirement.

Because of the requirement in the 2002 Help America Vote Act that all polling places have at least one accessible voting machine by 2006, we have seen signficant improvement in voting accessibility since the 2002 elections. AAPD does not want to move backward on accessibility, and we have been advocating along with other disability and civil rights groups that any voter verification system must meet HAVA's requirements that voters with disabilities can access that system with privacy and independence. Unfortunately, we are still awaiting the development of an accessible voting machine that can meet the Holt bill's paper ballot requirement and that has been tested and certified for use in elections.

We are working with other disability advocates to convince members of the House and Senate that the 2008 paper ballot deadline in the Holt bill is unrealistic, and will in effect force election officials to either violate the paper ballot requirements of the bill or violate the accessibility requirements of HAVA and the bill. We have also been advocating that new funds must be made available to enable election officials to purchase equipment once there is equipment that meets the bill's requirements, which will likely take several years to be developed.

The Holt bill requires the federal government to study how best to make it's voter-verifiable paper ballot accessible to voters with a wide range of disabilities, and requires the government to report on its findings by January of 2010. We do not understand why the bill's paper ballot requirements take effect two year's before the completion of this important study.

We encourage you to contact your Congressional representatives during the next two weeks and urge them to move back the paper ballot deadline in the Holt bill, and take any other steps necessary to ensure that voters with disabilities will be able to vote privately and independently in next year's critical presidential elections.