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Motion Expressing the Sense of Council of Allegheny County urging the Allegheny County Board of Elections to conduct a random sample audit of software currently loaded onto the County's electronic voting machines in order to ensure that such software meets applicable federal and state requirements, and requesting that the Board meet within thirty days to formulate such a software audit plan.
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WHEREAS, the Help America Vote act mandated the replacement of Allegheny County's lever voting machines in time for the May 2006 Primary Election; and
WHEREAS, Allegheny County ultimately replaced its lever voting machines with iVotronic touch screen machines, in compliance with the requirements of the Help America Vote Act; and
WHEREAS, in order to be legal for use in Pennsylvania, however, electronic voting machines must run software that has been approved by the Pennsylvania Department of State for use within the Commonwealth; and
WHEREAS, because voting machine software can be changed and/or updated to a different version with relative ease, it is the judgment of Council that it would be desirable to conduct a random sample audit on the voting machines in use within Allegheny County in order to ensure that only approved software versions are in use; and
WHEREAS, although all Council Members co-sponsored and unanimously passed a motion requesting a random sample software audit of the County's voting machines on June 17, 2008, it does not appear that the Board of Elections has yet acted on the request; and
WHEREAS, the General Elections, scheduled for November 4, 2008, will be held in one hundred and nineteen days, which should provide enough time to conduct the requested audit before the elections are held, provided that the Board of Elections begins formulating an audit plan now;
NOW THEREFORE, IT IS MOVED, AND IT IS THE SENSE OF THE COUNCIL OF ALLEGHENY COUNTY, the Allegheny County Board of Elections should devote serious consi...
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