Machinery of Democracy Author Discusses Eye-Opening Account of Hazards of Electronic Voting System at Bookhampton

For Immediate Release
June 1, 2007

Contact
Susan Lehman, 212–998–6318
Mike Webb, 212–998–6746

Machinery of Democracy Author Discusses Eye-Opening Account of Hazards of Electronic Voting System at BookHampton, as Congress Prepares for Vote on Voting Machines

Don’t curb your enthusiasm about democracy! 

On June 16, 2007 at 8:00 PM, Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law will speak at BookHampton in Sag Harbor about his new book, The Machinery Of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World (Academy Chicago Publishers), which was published with generous support from Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld star/writer/producer Larry David.

A Staff Counsel at the Brennan Center, Mr. Norden is a resident of North Sea in the town of Southampton. He was the recent subject of a Public Lives Profile in the New York Times and has also been interviewed about his work on NPR’s Morning Edition, The Diane Rehm Show and Talk of the Nation, CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, as well as the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.  One of the country’s leading authorities on voting technology, Mr. Norden has twice testified before Congress about what must be done to make our elections more secure, reliable and accurate.

The Machinery of Democracy is a book-length version of a ground-breaking and comprehensive study of electronic voting conducted by the Brennan Center Task Force on Voting System Security.  The task force was comprised of the nation’s leading private sector and government security experts and was chaired by Mr. Norden. The task force found that the electronic voting machines used throughout the country are unreliable and so vulnerable to electronic attack that a single person could swing a statewide election without much fear of detection. 

The book not only identifies 120 potential problems with voting technology, it offers relatively easy remedies that can better secure our elections.

The Machinery of Democracy couldn’t be timelier. Next month, the House is scheduled to vote on a federal election reform bill that adopts many of the Brennan Center’s proposals. Introduced by Rep. Rush Holt and drafted with the help of Machinery of Democracy author and task force chair Lawrence Norden, HR 811 would require electronic voting machines have checkable paper trails and auditing. The bill would also ban wireless components that make the machines vulnerable to electronic tampering.  Senator Feinstein introduced a similar bill in the Senate on May 25, 2007.

This event is co-sponsored by the Brennan Center and the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons.