A law regulating voting machines making its way through Congress lacks a provision allowing voters to sue -- a right that was a cornerstone of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.Should citizens explicitly be allowed to sue if they can prove their votes have been stolen or miscounted by electronic voting machines?
As election integrity activists focus their attention on pressuring the House Committee on Administration to ban electronic voting machines when Congress reconvenes next week, the question of whether voters can individually sue -- known as a private cause of action -- has received scant public attention. But that legal right, which was a cornerstone of the federal Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, is not in the panel's bill, H.R. 811. Instead, the bill says citizens can sue under other preexisting laws.
"There is no new private cause of action," said John Bonifaz, a noted voting rights attorney who is now a senior legal fellow with Demos, a New York City-based progressive think tank that focuses on numerous pro-democracy issues, speaking of the bill proposed by Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J.
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