The following is a statement from Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting in response to the House Democrats’ proposed coronavirus response package, the HEROES Act HR 6800. For additional media inquiries, please contact Aurora Matthews, aurora@newheightscommunications.com
May 13, 2020 — “COVID-19 created a new landscape for conducting elections and election officials need sufficient funds to ensure that voters can vote safely and know that their votes were counted accurately. We support the security measures that accompany the $3.6 billion in funding such as signature verification with opportunity to cure, ballot tracking and risk-limiting audits. Verified Voting also applauds the provisions preventing federal funding from being spent on dangerously insecure online voting systems.”
Verified Voting, a non-partisan election integrity organization, advocates for evidence-based elections where the majority of voters mark paper ballots, the voter verifies the ballot before casting, there is a strong chain of custody of the ballots, and robust post-election audits such as risk-limiting audits (RLAs) are conducted. Verified Voting’s COVID-19 recommendations on election security and verification can be viewed here.