Arlen Specter is apparently supporting his radioactive colleague Sen. Larry Craig. That’s … interesting. I hope he uses this defense.

The lunatics in D.C. are about to roll out their latest mass murder - This year’s model with more air strikes! Fewer ground troops!

And in the House of Representatives, Rep. Rush Holt’s H.R. 811 Microsoft 811 is scheduled to come for a vote today.

Of all of those miserable prospects, the one you have the best chance of affecting is the vote in the House on Holt’s billl. Of course, even Holt is distancing himself from it now that the software industry has gotten to rewrite it. This is from a Holt town hall event in July:

Rep. Holt: The bill has been changed since I introduced it. It’s no longer my bill — well, it’s still my bill but it’s been marked up in committee. Unfortunately, the committee that made this change heard from Microsoft. They heard that Voice. The point is Microsoft did lobby strongly. It wasn’t just Microsoft. It was everybody who -
Audience question: Diebold?
Rep. Holt: No, it was software — the software industry.

Michael Collins, writing at Scoop, details the disaster that HR 811, which he calls the Vendor Protection Act, has become:

A cardinal principal of almost all factions of the election integrity movement has been open computer source code for voting machines. Open source code is defined as, “…source code of software that is available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent intellectual property restrictions.” The basis for computerized voting machine software and methods could be examined by any citizen. As a result, it would be much easier to examine those nail biting elections we have so often or simply check on the integrity of any election, no matter how close. For the technically informed, this is one of the key elements required for transparent and fair elections where computerized voting (e-voting) is in place.

Advocates argue that open source computer code in voting machines will give greater access to understand how the machines operate. Quite simply, open source code will make it easier to assure that the votes cast are those counted. Not only will it be easier to check on any private vendor’s voting machine operations, with open source, this inspection will take place on an even playing field.

That was the original idea behind H.R. 811. The 2003 version of Holt’s bill was very clear. It stated:

No voting system shall at any time contain or use undisclosed software.

The bill, as introduced in 2006 was just as clear:

…source code, object code, executable representation, and ballot programming files [shall be made] available for inspection promptly upon request to any person.

The current version of Holt’s bill up for vote this week backs off of the public right to inspect voting machine software, open source code, in a big way and lets vendors keep secret the software and methods that determine your elections. Let me put it another way, you don’t get to see how the voting machines work that elect the officials who govern you – ever!

Ask the voters in Tullytown or Sarasota how that works out.

Advocates of HR 811 like to tell us not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good but Holt’s bill can’t even be considered good anymore. Ellen Theisen at VotersUnite.org has a long list of reasons why that’s the case.

Read about H.R. 811. Then, if you think that being able to know how our representatives are elected and that being able to recount results independently of the machine that records them is important to our elections process, pick up the phone today to tell your Congressman to vote against H.R. 811.