October 09, 2005

Governor signs SB 370, making paper trail record the official ballot for DRE recounts

Late Friday Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 370, which provides that the paper audit trail record will prevail over the DRE electronic record in any recount, including the mandatory one percent manual recount. Both the Secretary of State and the the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials opposed enactment of the bill.

The Alameda Times Star reports:

"Turning aside opposition from state and local elections officials, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger late Friday signed a bill requiring hand counts of paper printouts from electronic voting machines as a check for accuracy.
As the first state to require paper trails for e-voting, California now becomes the largest state in the nation to use those paper trails as the ultimate arbiters of political races, a move expected to sway other states.

"I'm very, very happy," said Sen. Debra Bowen, the Redondo Beach Democrat who authored the bill and chairs the Senate Elections and Apportionment Committee.

For 40 years, California law has required hand counts of ballots in 1 percent of precincts for confirmation of computerized vote tallies. But with fully electronic voting on touchscreens, elections officials either have ignored the law or simply recounted the digital ballots. Now they must turn to an independent paper record that voters on electronic, touchscreen machines approve when casting their final ballot.

The state's chief elections officer and the California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials, had urged a veto. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said the paper trails — printed for now on cash registerlike paper rolls about the length of a football field — don't look enough like a ballot, nor do they offer verification of electronic ballots for visually handicapped voters.

Local elections officials objected to the measure as "time consuming and onerous" and pointed out that the malevolent programmers could rig the printouts just as they could the electronic vote tally.

For paper-trail advocates, that potential for fraud was more reason to press for the bill's passage."

You can read the article here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at October 9, 2005 11:55 AM