August 16, 2005

"Paper trail may clog e-voting advances"

"California's secretary of state, a proponent of backup paper records for electronic-voting machines, is nonetheless opposing their use in vote recounts as legally problematic and impractical, an opinion that could influence national voting reforms.

After months of collecting public opinion, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson recently urged rejection of a new bill that would mandate counting of paper-trail records on e-voting machines.

That, according to voting activists, would render paper trails useless as an independent check on voting computers and software."

You can find the full article here.

The bill in question, SB 370, provides that the electronic record of each DRE vote will be considered the official record of the vote. The bill also provides, however, that the voter verified paper audit trail will be considered the official paper audit record for the mandatory 1-percent manual recont and that it will govern if there is any difference between it and the electronic record during a 1-percent manual tally or full recount.

Posted by Randy Riddle at August 16, 2005 03:00 PM