Since you never came back to discuss, Rep. Holt, I figured I'd just post my response here anyway. Here are your points, and my counterpoints.

HOLT: Neither the EAC nor a state may pick and choose where audits will be conducted. Selection of precincts for audit must be done at random. In other words, the EAC has no authority here. H.R. 550 is explicit on this point.

WHY THIS DOESN'T ANSWER OUR CONCERNS: Without quibbling over the semantics of EAC authority, which is being asserted as we speak by the EAC in any number of areas, let's just look at the matter of inserting federally mandated random "audits" into our process. The Supreme Court in 2000 selected a President for the United States of America. They did this by invoking the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment, stating that partial recounts deny some voters of their rights to have their vote counted equally. This precedent, in fact, was just used again to decide a case in the 6th Circuit Court (Stewart v Blackwell). HR 550's "audits" become de facto recounts because 550 includes language to expand the audit if something awry is discovered, and it also expands citizens rights under HAVA to file a complaint due to any outcome of that audit. (Section 5, d & e) So under 550, citizens may file a complaint to respond "to an action taken by a State or jurisdiction in response to an audit conducted by the Commission under the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005 of the results of an election for Federal office or by the failure of a State or jurisdiction to take an action in response to such an audit." If this is not asking for a recount, challenging the outcome, and leading down the equal protection road to judicial election selection, what is? HR 550 supporters can say "no that won't happen" as much as they want. The fact is it has already happened - twice now, and calling a recount an audit is not going to change the outcome.

HOLT: An audit is not the same as a recount. A recount seeks to determine the actual results of an election. By contrast, an audit ensures proper functioning of a voting system by spot-checking its tally against the voter-verified paper records. By testing randomly, an audit deters malfeasance because potential bad actors won’t know which 2% of precincts could be audited. If discrepancies are found, a larger audit follows, and potentially a recount.

WHY THIS DOESN'T ANSWER OUR CONCERNS: Representative Holt, you yourself say above that the EAC audit can trigger a recount. The lines between audit and recount are very blurry and getting more so by the minute. See my response to audit/recount problems above. Because 550 allows expansion of the "audit" as well as an expanded citizen complaint process as relating to the "audit" outcomes, these audits may well constitute recounts. I dare say, any lawyer worth his salt who is challenging an outcome based on these audits will be calling them recounts. The unintended or intended consequences of the auditing aspect of this bill are enough to give one pause, and on top of that there are additional statistical dilemmas raised by others much smarter than myself with respect to the sampling configurations defined by HR 550. All of these points should be thoughtfully considered.

HOLT: H.R. 550 does not open the door to EAC contracting. Rather, it limits the EAC’s already existing power to do so by requiring public bidding on all contracts. This makes it possible for established citizen groups (perhaps such as your own) to bid for audit contracts. This is exactly what we want: regular citizens protecting the integrity of our elections. If we left it to the states to do audits, the results would be as we’ve seen in the past.

WHY THIS DOESN'T ANSWER OUR CONCERNS: This assumes that the federal government can do a better job of things than local government. Sure there are plenty of corrupt local governments, but they are more easily booted out than a corrupt federal government, as we all plainly see these days. But what about the states, like NH, that have more experience conducting manual counts than any other state, and they know how to do it right? Would we gain or lose from EAC contractors coming into the state to do our counts? We would lose. What standards are in place for best management practices for manual counting at the federal level (hint: none). What evidence do we have that the EAC conducts itself according to standards of transparency right now? (None. They just willy nilly swapped out documentation on their website - documentation that already ignored the thousands of public comments with respect to standards and guidelines.) We do not need another federal bureaucracy trumping states rights, and we absolutely do not need to create another election vote counting industry.

HOLT: H.R. 550 does not call for DREs with printers. The bill only requires a voter-verified paper audit system that is accessible to all eligible voters. Section 2 of the bill explicitly contemplates paper ballots such as optical scan, mail-in, and those made by accessible marking devices. The bill would allow DREs only if they include a paper record.

WHY THIS DOESN'T ANSWER OUR CONCERNS: HR 550 does not "not" call for DREs with printers.. NH law specifically states: "no voting machine or device shall be used in any election in this state unless it reads the voter's choice on a paper ballot ". I think this is pretty clear. Why can't 550 be as clear? This eliminates all questions about receipts, etc. and just zeroes in on the fact that election systems should have-- as their base-- voter marked and verifiable paper ballots.

HOLT: In closing, H.R. 550 is the product of citizen activism in the greatest tradition of grassroots involvement. I reject, and in fact take umbrage at, any suggestion that the bill has been “hijacked.” To assert so is not only wrong, it is an insult to the thousands of people who have put in so much time, thought, and effort to improve and advance H.R. 550.

WHY THIS DOESN'T ANSWER OUR CONCERNS: All due respect to the many people who have worked on this piece of legislation. But when the bill started out, it spoke to the issue of paper trails and black box technology. What happened in between to add this bit about the EAC? I find it hard to believe that this is a grassroots idea - but if it is, it's not one for which the "grassroots" has fully considered the consequences.

Additionally, the writing of the bill began several years ago, and what we know now is very different from what we knew, or were willing to acknowledge, then.

It is disingenous to the point of false advertising for HR550 proponents to talk about the 50,000+ signatures gathered in support of this bill, when those signatures were collected from mass mailings that stated nothing more than "demand a paper trail!" Large organizations like MoveOn.org and Common Cause enjoy a trust factor among many in their membership, and signatures solicited in this manner benefitted from this trust factor. But if their mailings had instead said "demand a paper trail, and demand a centralized executive commission of four presidential appointees to have power over the nation's election systems and vote counts" I question how many signatures would be on those petitions.

There has been huge resistance to ideas expressing a renewed understanding of election systems, the electronic voting industry, and the EAC. This resistance has resulted in a pushing back, shutting down, and complete inability on the part of 550 supporters to even discuss or address the kinds of concerns I have raised above. Some supporters of 550 have even stooped so low as to call those of us with differing opinions "enemies of auditable and verifiable elections" and their "opponents."

This is indeed a strange approach for people working so hard for transparency and democracy. And I have two words for those who take this approach:

Let's talk.