Holt Paper-Trail Election Bill Dead? -- UPDATE: Not Dead Yet: "I'm hearing from a few sources that negotiations over a federal bill governing electronic voting machines -- a bill that has been kicking around Congress for four years and looked to finally be making progress this year -- broke down late Tuesday Wednesday as a result of significant dissension over the legislation's wording. It's unclear what the bill's fate may be at this point.

The bill, HR 811 or the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007, was close to reaching the House floor and would require all voting machines to produce a voter-verifiable paper audit trail, mandate manual audits of election results and require voting machine companies to hand over the source code for their machines to qualified parties. Now it appears that none of that will happen very soon.

Representative Rush Holt (D-New Jersey) first introduced a version of the bill in 2003 at a time when the controversy over the security of electronic voting machines was just heating up. The bill was viewed then as partisan politics, however, and got support from only a small handful of Republicans. This year was the first time the bill gained traction. Although there have been numerous complaints about the bill and much resistance from the voting machine companies, election officials, disability advocates and other interested parties, more than 200 representatives signed up as co-sponsors. A companion bill in the Senate has been making progress as well.

It's unclear now whether the bill will be pulled and reintroduced later or what will happen to it at this late stage in the congressional session. I put in a call to Holt's spokesman (sorry for calling so late, Matt) but he was unable to confirm anything about the bill or the breakdown in negotiations yet. I'll keep readers posted.

UPDATE: Holt's spokesman, Matt Dennis, got back to me this morning and says that the negotiations for the bill are still going on and that Holt's office still hopes to get the bill to the floor for a vote before the August recess.

(Read Original Article - Via Threat Level.)