Excerpts of Statement to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary

Excerpts of Statement to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary

Jenny Rose Flanagan

Director of Voting & Elections

Common Cause

Wednesday, December 19, 2012; 10:00 a.m.

Voting should not be an endurance sport in our country, yet tens of thousands of Americans from every political stripe faced lines up to six hours long on Election Day because of inadequate planning, unfair rules and restricted access to the ballot box.

The images of voters waiting in lines, and the frustrations we heard from voters who were made to feel that their vote did not matter are no way to run a free, fair and accessible election. The health of our democracy and our right to vote requires decisive action now to ensure that all Americans can truly participate in our elections.

Voting by Internet, Email or Fax is Not the Solution. Cyber security experts at the Department of Homeland Security and at the National Institute for Standards and Technology have warned that because the security tools currently available would not be able to protect these votes from cyber-attacks, Internet voting is not recommended at this time because it places our elections at risk.

Post-election audits to verify that the outcome of the election is correct should be mandatory. We cannot simply rely on the machine counts without a manual check on whether votes were recorded correctly.