Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight believes that the remaining votes to be counted in the Begich-Stevens Alaska Senate race will favor Begich. The former Democratic mayor of Anchorage remains 3,500 votes behind newly convicted felon Ted Stevens and may end up passing him with the remaining early voting ballots yet to be counted. And there's no reason not to trust Nate's analysis -- his prediction for an Obama victory was dead on.

If you want to help get him out, checkout our petition, "Thanks for the memories, Ted Stevens."

Recent articles in the Washington Post and New York Times raise concerns about potential electoral problems this November. The areas of concern may sound familiar to Change Congress readers: security of electronic voting machines, lack of an auditable paper trail, voter registration, and voter identification & disenfranchisement. Similar concerns were raised in the run up to the 2004 & 2006 elections. In the aftermath of both the 2004 and 2006 elections there were numerous and significant claims of voter disenfranchisement and voting irregularities. Some went so far as to claim that these irregularities had altered the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. These claims, while never having been fully proven in a court of law or of public opinion, are nonetheless unsettling when considered in the light of the problems that accompanied the 2000 presidential election.

Why is it that we are hearing similar stories eight years later?

Potential answers can be found in the origins of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, the chief sponsor of the Senate bill, described HAVA as "the first Civil Rights Act of the 21st century." HAVA was a response to the election problems of 2000. The explicit goal of HAVA was to fix America's electoral system by replacing outdated voting systems with newer, more reliable machines and procedures. The act created the Election Assistance Commission to administer Federal elections, to establish a set of election standards and to allocate $3.9 billion to be used for investing in new voting equipment.

Lobbying, Campaign Contributions and Conflicts of Interest

HAVA's goals were noble but the results have been questionable. Some of the most vilified political figures in recent memory are deeply associated with the creation of the act. Former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney was the chief sponsor of the House bill. Robert F. Kennedy Jr described Ney's HAVA involvement:

"The primary author and steward of HAVA was Rep. Bob Ney, the GOP chairman of the powerful U.S. House Administration Committee. Ney had close ties to the now-disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose firm received at least $275,000 from Diebold to lobby for its touch-screen machines. Ney's former chief of staff, David DiStefano, also worked as a registered lobbyist for Diebold, receiving at least $180,000 from the firm to lobby for HAVA and 'other election reform issues.' Ney - who accepted campaign contributions from DiStefano and counted Diebold's then-CEO O'Dell among his constituents - made sure that HAVA strongly favored the use of the company's machines."

For the record, both Abramoff and Ney are convicted federal felons as a result of accepting money and gifts in exchange for political favors.

Kennedy also found a series of deep financial and professional ties between lawmakers and voting machine manufacturers. "Diebold, along with its employees and their families, has contributed at least $300,000 to GOP candidates and party funds since 1998." Additionally, Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, who also voted in favor of HAVA, was the former chair of one of the four major voting equipment manufacturers.

HAVA Unchanged Since 2002 + Diebold Today

From what I was able to gather from an hour and a half of research on Google, Maplight.org and the Library of Congress site, the Help America Vote Act has not been modified once since its initial passage in 2002. Of the more than 50 HAVA-related bills that have been introduced in the House and Senate since 2002 none have passed.

The Diebold board of directors acted to put an end to all executive level political giving in 2004 stating that Diebold officials "may not make contributions to, directly or indirectly, any political candidate, party, election issue or cause, or participate in any political activities, except for voting." Despite the ban, Diebold executives continued to give money to Republican campaigns. Since that time Diebold has changed the name of its voting equipment subsidiary to Premier Election Solutions and while executive level campaign contributions appear to have come to an end, state level lobbying efforts continue. In addition to Diebold/Premier, other voting equipment manufacturers have engaged in an aggressive lobbying campaign in order to counter negative public opinion and to win business from states which have been allocated hundreds of millions in HAVA funds.

Saving our Democracy: A Call for Transparency

Given the importance of the issue, the integrity of our democracy, there is a surprising lack of information available on the link between campaign finance, lobbying and the voting records of politicians. The data exists but it's certainly not easily accessible. Our friends at OpenSecrets and MapLight have been doing a tremendous job of increasing the transparency in politics but neither has data that goes back to 2002 and the HAVA vote. If you have access to useful tools or information related to HAVA, please let us know.

In general our political system and the economy of influence that drives it need to be more open and accessible. Political contributions by PACs, lobbyists and corporations make up a significant proportion of money in politics and we need a more transparent system that will allow us to more easily determine if the drafting of legislation and votes are being traded for cash. There are plenty of tools out there that are being developed for this, including the array that the Sunlight Foundation have been working on. What we need to do is integrate these tools into our daily lives. Sunlight Foundation is collecting comments on the recent federal bailout bill. You can add your own here.

Given theses facts, it's very easy to believe that Diebold and other voting equipment manufacturers gave money to well placed politicians in order to influence legislation that was worth $3.9 billion to their industry.

We all know there are problems with electronic voting machines. This is one issue, perhaps just outside the immediate scope of focus for Change Congress, but it is intricately tied to much of what we do, like supporting a working democracy. I don't think many disagree that having a system that correctly counts a citizen's vote should be a vertebra in the backbone of an honest democracy.

The bad news is that our leaders in Washington don't feel, for some reason, that its a pressing problem to be resolved. Last week, one of the key bills being brought before Congress to combat the issues surrounding electronic voting machines was voted down. Rep. Rush Holt (D) of New Jersey sponsored the bill which would allow states to receive federal money to move to a paper-balloting system instead of touch-screen or direct recording electronic machines.

Several states and counties have moved on their own from touch-screen machines to optically scanned paper ballots that can be recounted if needed.

"This bill this week, it was all optional," Holt said. "All it was, was reimbursing districts for doing the right thing. ... And by doing the right thing, I mean offering paper-based voting and more, requiring audits."

Here's where it turns political:

On Tuesday, the bill, which needed a two-thirds majority to pass, went down to defeat in the House 239-178, with 223 Democrats in favor and 176 Republican opposed, after the White House sent out a statement opposing the measure. The statement said the administration "strongly opposes" the bill because it would "create a new program that is largely redundant with existing law, and therefore unnecessary, to reimburse States for the costs of making last-minute changes to their voting systems by Election Day 2008."

We know that simply creating a paper trail isn't the silver bullet in solving this issue. However, its a small step in the right direction. Security issues, even to scientists and Silicon Valley, are among the most pressing problems with the current electronic voting machines. This from a NY Times piece this past summer:

Matthew A. Bishop, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, who led the team that tried to compromise the machines, said his group was surprised by how easy it was not only to pick the physical locks on the machines, but also to break through the software defenses meant to block intruders.

Professor Bishop said that all the machines had problems and that one of the biggest was that the manufacturers appeared to have added the security measures after the basic systems had been designed.

By contrast, he said, the best way to create strong defenses is “to build security in from the design, in Phase 1.”

While security and hacker-proof systems remain a top priority of those working on the electronic voting issues, creating a paper trail at least will provide some sort of reference to go back to and investigate possible errors. And, whether its redundant or not, the bottom line is that whatever is in place now is not working and needs to be ratified. Holt's bill was an attempt to create a solution. The White House decided it wasn't a solution and instead of offering ideas on how to deal with the existing problems, simply shut the door and threw away the key.