News-Record.com

Amazing, the things Gilbert will say to try to keep congress from mandating voter verified paper ballots for all 50 states:

Here is Kathy Dopp's summary of Gilbert's "testimony". This is the same stuff Gilbert claimed in NC and it was wrong then.
He exaggerates the audits knowing that NC's audits take only about 2 -3 hours of work.

Gilbert George of Gilbert County Board of Elections incorrectly claimed that:
* It would take hundreds of people 3 weeks to conduct the election audits (maybe if you found the
slowest boat to China way to count voter verifiable paper ballots � Utah found a very efficient way
to count reel-to-reel voter verifiable trails), and
* eliminating DREs would hurt the disabled, and
* eliminating DREs would waste taxpayer dollars.

http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/S1487/Rebuttal2Panelists-S1487.pdf

The fact is, DRES ARE a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Gilbert scared his county commissioners into giving him extra millions so that he could have his precious touchscreen machines instead of optical scanners. If he had chosen optical scanners as did 77 other counties, Guilford Co would have saved at least 5 million, maybe more.

As for touchscreens being better for disabled, thats not what Dottie Neely, Social Worker for the Blind in Guilford County says. She went to County Commissioner meetings and told the Commissioners that there were better devices available in NC called ballot marking devices (in fact many counties chose these). Neely said that the ballot marking devices (which mark an optical scan paper ballot) were much easier to use by blind and disabled people, and that the touchscreen machines that Gilbert preferred - were very poor at assisting the disabled.

SO here we have it, 3 claims clearly wrong, and while we rebutted Gilbert successfully at the NC Legislature, we didn't have that opportunity in DC.

More on Gilbert's activism against paper ballots here: http://www.ncvoter.net/guilford.html

Too bad Mr. Gilbert does not pay attention to the experience of disabled voters like those who had the opportunity to "test drive" voting equipment in Oregon. A vendor fair was held in 2005 and hundreds of disabled voters tried out the systems before the state's purchase decision was made. The survey they filled out provided valuable input. A wide variety of touchscreen systems were included in the vendor fair as well as several other options.

The top two performers in the opinion of the disabled voters who filled out the survey were the IVS telephone voting system and the AutoMark ballot marker. Both of these systems produce a paper ballot that can be processed by optical scanners. Ultimately the IVS telephone voting system with a faxback paper ballot was used successfully in Oregon in the November 2006 General Election. Several other states also use the IVS system successfully. Other states have had success with the AutoMark. Here is the link to the Oregon Vendor Fair survey results: http://www.sos.state.or.us/elections/HAVA/vendorfair/flyer.html

BTW, the Oregon Legislature recently passed an audit law modeled on HR 811 (the bill sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt (NJ)) Unlike Mr. Gilbert the Director of Elections in Oregon, John Lindback, is a supporter of this audit bill and testified in favor of it at a recent hearing.