By Tim Canova — Candidate for Florida’s 23rd Congressional District

In the aftermath of our 2016 race against Debbie Wasserman Schultz, we heard many reports of possible rigging of our election results. To put these concerns to rest, we sought to inspect the ballots and verify the vote. But I was forced to sue to enforce our inspection rights and while the lawsuit was pending, Wasserman Schultz’s cronies at the Broward Supervisor of Elections destroyed all our paper ballots in violation of federal and state law and in defiance of the court’s authority.

Election Integrity experts understand the importance of maintaining paper ballots precisely because computer scanned images can be so easily rigged through software manipulation. In “The Myth of the Hacker-Proof Voting Machine,” Kim Zetter recently reported in The New York Times Magazine on the vulnerability of many of our nation’s election systems to remote-access manipulation (i.e., “hacking”) — even systems that are supposedly unconnected to the Internet!

New legislation is needed to require paper ballots throughout the country, and also to address the vulnerability of electronic voting systems. However, we must also insist that existing federal law be enforced. When Broward County destroyed our paper ballots, they violated federal law requiring that voting records be maintained for 22 months — yet, in the six months since the illegal ballot destruction there’s still been no criminal or Congressional inquiries.

U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) recently introduced the “Securing America’s Election Act” (H.R. 5147) — a version of a longer Senate bill — which would require the use of voter-verified paper ballots or a paper ballot backup in all federal elections. This is a step in the right direction. But it does not go far enough. For instance, it does not require that all paper ballots be counted by hand in public and reported immediately at the local precinct level — the kind of transparency that would allow us to effectively verify the vote. And it would permit audits through the use of electronic counting machines that can be hacked, as Kim Zetter reports, even if not connected to the Internet.

And Tulsi’s bill would continue to vest supervisory authority over these insecure electronic voting systems in the federal Election Assistance Commission which has already proven itself incapable of resisting the agenda of private contractors of electronic voting systems and software.

Also missing from these legislative fixes is any real accountability for the mass purging of citizens from voting rolls, mass voter suppression, and other illegal election rigging that marked the 2016 elections.

We must address the systematic corruption in our elections and criminal justice systems. For instance, the New York City Board of Elections has admitted to purging more than 200,000 citizens from its voting rolls in the days before its 2016 Democratic presidential primary. And in my race, local election officials illegally destroyed all of our paper ballots, making genuine verification impossible. Yet, there’s been no criminal investigations of any of this illegal rigging. Without criminal prosecutions, there’s no accountability and such frauds will continue in the future.

A recent hacking conference revealed the vulnerability of electronic voting systems to hacking and software manipulation. That’s why most other democracies have banned electronic voting machines and instead require paper ballots counted by hand in public and reported immediately at the local precinct level. That’s also the most transparent and verifiable of election systems and it’s how we did it in the United States for decades.

With your help we will keep fighting for Election Integrity. We must demand real election reform now, and criminal prosecutions and real accountability for the illegal rigging of the 2016 elections.

Please support our efforts to demand Election Integrity in Broward County and around the country. We are pressing our lawsuit and calling on state and federal authorities to start criminal investigations of the ballot destruction and for Congress to begin an inquiry. Sign up at TimCanova.com to help our campaign against one of the most corrupt politicians in the country.