Even GOP Now Admits Electronic Voting Allows Election Theft

by Steve

Something significant happened yesterday in the Congress. No, I don’t mean the flag-burning amendment vote in the Senate, where the Bill Frist cabal spent more time on wedge issues in June than they did in debating solutions to Iraq or health care. What happened yesterday is that even Republicans in Congress now admit that electronic voting systems are insecure and it is too easy for someone to steal an election.

That’s right, even Republicans now admit this.

At yesterday's news conference, the push for more secure electronic voting machines, which has been popular largely on the left side of the political spectrum since the contested outcome of the 2000 presidential election in Florida, picked up some high-profile support from the other side.

Republican Reps. Tom Cole (Okla.) and Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, joined Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) in calling for a law that would set strict requirements for electronic voting machines. Howard Schmidt, former chief of security at Microsoft and President Bush's former cybersecurity adviser, also endorsed the Brennan report.

"It's not a question of 'if,' it's a question of 'when,' " Davis said of an attempt to manipulate election results.

Great. So if the GOP is ready to disregard the “nothing to see here; move on” blather from Diebold and others, then Democrats will need to fast-track this through each house this year so that any changes can be implemented in 2007 in time for the 2008 election. And if the GOP balks, we can point to how fast they rammed the Help America Vote Act through after Florida so that the 2004 election would be affected, and point out that the integrity of the 2008 election is at risk from any GOP delays. And if Bush does us the favor of vetoing the bill, all the better.

(Aside from a diarist over at DKos, it seems this hasn't been covered elsewhere today by the biggies in the center-left.)