To People Concerned about Voting: September 2005 (This is a CC of a "special notice" email sent to RangeVoting.) I have decided to use rare "special notice" emails (which get delivered even to those on RV who do not normally get emails) for the purpose of very important ACTION ANNOUNCEMENTS. That is, situations when the time has come for us all to rise up and use our mighty weapons to strike down Evil. This is the first such special notice and I think we actually have a chance to have a good positive effect here in spite of our small size. HERE IS THE SITUATION. The USA enacted HAVA, the "Help America Vote Act," in 2002. It looks to me to have been pretty much a failure, just an excuse for pork with minimum possible actual voting reform while disguising the major problems. Anyhow, as part of HAVA, the EAC was created: the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. http://www.eac.gov/ This is a pathetic toothless body apparently dominated by lobbyists from voting machine manufacturers, whose purpose is to create "voting system guidelines." By following these guidelines, supposedly voting machine manufacturers and election officials everywhere will become better. The guidelines cover testing, certification, decertification, and recertification of voting system hardware and software, and provide a set of specifications and requirements against which voting systems can be tested to determine if they have all the basic functionality, accessibility, and security capabilities. The guidelines, however, are purely voluntary and have no force of law. And there is no entity to check to ensure the guidelines are actually being followed in any case,and indeed such a check may be beyond the capability of humanity. (Those were was what I meant by "toothless.") EAC has in fact now produced a (largely complete) draft copy of their guidelines, which you can download as a 42 MegaByte pdf file (2-volume book) from http://guidelines.kennesaw.edu/vvsg/intro.asp . (Also available as HTML files.) Because it is absolutely unreadable dreck in book form, I recommend you read it with a computer with text-search-and-find capability. It is a pretty disgusting document largely consisting of "do whatever gratifies the hearts of corrupt voting machine manufacturers and to hell with the public and voting integrity." Even tiny ways to gratify voting machine manufacturers get unfailingly selected even if the downside of that choice is the plausible end of all democracy in the USA. And many current bad practices are fossilized into the guidelines (to hell with the word "improve" in HAVA) so that later we will hear "but our voting machine goes well beyond what is required by law by even obeying the voluntary EAC guidelines brought to us by such luminaries as (EAC member and Turing Award Winning cryptologist) Ron Rivest, so how can you possibly object to it? My goodness, this is a 2-volume book of requirements! HERE IS WHAT I AM REQUESTING THAT YOU INDIVIDUALLY DO ABOUT IT. The EAC is required to ask the public for comments on its guidelines, and those comments will be permanently posted on its web site. I want you as concerned citizens to provide your comments. I believe that they were only going to get about 20 comments from the whole country. We have the opportunity to double or triple that. Don't let the SOBs get a free ride. Your comments may be emailed to votingsystemguidelines@eac.gov (or by fax to Voting System Guidelines Comments at (202) 566-3127 or US mailed to Voting System Guidelines Comments, U.S. Election Assistance Commission, 1225 New York Ave., NW, Suite 1100, Washington, D.C. 20005.) You have to get them in BEFORE 30 SEPTEMBER. Include as a preface something saying you are a concerned citizen and have XXX impressive-sounding qualifications; do not give them any clue your comments are in any way dependent on anybody else's. You can also recruit more people to provide comments but remember it all has to go in before 30 september. I will provide my own comments in continually updated form at www.math.temple.edu/~wds/crv/WdsHava and you can read them to get a clue of what I disapprove of. Also, you can post your own views to RangeVoting@yahoogroups.com which can serve as a forum on this (e.g. if you spot something else outrageous, please let us know about it). I will continue to update my WdsHava file until the time I officially send it in. Warren D Smith