May 11, 2008

Providing legal resources and election news to California election officials and the attorneys who represent them.

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February 28, 2007

"Test of Riverside County voting machines called limited"

"California's Secretary of State Debra Bowen said a proposed hacking test of Riverside County's voting machines fails to address the larger issue of security among people with access to the machines outside polling hours.

A letter from Bowen distributed to county supervisors Tuesday was sent in response to an inquiry from Supervisor Jeff Stone about the legality of his proposal to allow critics of electronic voting 15 minutes to hack into a machine.

Bowen said there was nothing prohibiting the type of test Stone proposed conducting.

Stone was traveling Tuesday and unavailable for comment. In the past, Stone said the test would disprove naysayers, whom he said have launched unfounded accusations against the integrity of the county's Sequoia voting machines. The machines were first used in 2000.SAVE R VOTE, a Temecula Valley elections watchdog group, accepted Stone's hacking challenge earlier this year but insisted that more time be given.

The group enlisted Finnish computer security expert Harri Hursti, who agreed to come to Riverside County. Two years ago, Hursti uncovered severe flaws in a different electronic system used in Leon County, Fla., hacking into it in a test and changing the results.

Bowen declined Stone's invitation to attend the test."

The article is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:48 AM | Permalink. . .

February 27, 2007

"Early-voting videotape raises a few questions"

"A security video from the Duval County Supervisor of Elections Office shows a woman who appears to slide a piece of paper into a voting machine twice within 45 minutes during early voting last August.

Also within those 45 minutes, the video shows a top elections official opening the back of a voting machine and appearing to hand something to someone in an office in which Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland can be seen walking into moments earlier.

The official then walks to get another piece of paper from a rack behind a counter and consults with Holland and the woman. The woman then leaves the view of the camera. When she returns into view, she places a piece of paper in the machine, the second time she had done so in less than 45 minutes, according to the video.

When asked by the Times-Union to watch the tape, Holland said any video from inside his office was obtained illegally and that he would not view it until he was able to contact an investigator from the State Attorney's Office."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:40 AM | Permalink. . .

February 26, 2007

"Questions hover over recount"

From the Orange County Register:

"Since I introduced myself to the mysterious Gerald Feather during the first day of ballot recounting last week, he has come up to me twice during breaks, offering a friendly hint of a smile and a few words of small talk.

"When this is all over, I'll buy you a cup of coffee or lunch and tell you, hmm …" he said Wednesday, which I optimistically interpreted as meaning he would tell me why the heck he is the front man for a second recount.

Cuz he sure ain't spilling any beans now.

When Janet Nguyen lost the Feb. 6 special election for county supervisor by seven votes to Trung Nguyen, it was no surprise that she reached into her wallet for a $1,200-per-day recount. But when elections law expert Fred Woocher filed a second request on Feather's behalf, the head scratching began.

Why have two parties pay for the same recount? Who was funding the Woocher effort, since it's said he costs tens of thousands of dollars just to get involved with an election?

Feather said he voted for Janet and volunteered on her campaign. Janet, a Garden Grove councilwoman, appointed Feather's daughter to the city's Traffic Commission. Members of Janet's team told me Woocher might come on board before he actually did – but have since ardently denied that Janet, a Republican, has anything to do with the effort of Woocher, a Democrat.

"I just want to see an honest recount," Feather told me."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 05:06 PM | Permalink. . .

February 21, 2007

Orange County Recount Begins

From the Orange County Register:

"Two recounts got under way today in the contested race for a seat on the Orange County Board of Supervisors, one funded by challenger Janet Nguyen and the other by a mysterious voter.

More than two dozen lawyers and observers crowded around tables at the Registrar of Voters Office on the first day of the second counting of ballots cast in the Feb. 6 special election to replace Supervisor Lou Correa.

Janet Nguyen is challenging the results that gave Trung Nguyen the win by just seven votes in a historic election that saw Vietnamese-American voters turn out in force. She asked for the recount last week and suggested possible voter fraud in more than 40 ballots cast in Westminster.

The motives behind a second request for a recount have been difficult to pin down. Gerald Feather, 67, a registered Republican in Garden Grove, asked for the second count and is being represented by Santa Monica attorney Fred Woocher. Trung Nguyen's campaign has accused Janet Nguyen of teaming up with union officials for the second request, which her campaign denies."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 03:20 PM | Permalink. . .

"Princeton Prof: E-Voting Machines Easy To Hack"

"Tampering with the vote count on Sequoia touch screen voting machines is easy to do, said a college professor in a legal filing.

Princeton computer science professor Andrew Appel successfully accessed and modified the computer chips that control the vote count on five of the AVC Advantage machines produced by Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems. Appel bought the machines on a government auction website.

What he did anyone could do in about ten minutes, Appel said on his Web site, and in a filing in a New Jersey electronic voting lawsuit.

"These machines are usually delivered to the polling places, which are elementary schools and firehouses and so on, a day or two before the election. And they're routinely left unattended," Appel told KCBS reporter Holly Quan.

Without mentioning the large number of garages and other community centers that also serve as polling places in many neighbhorhoods, Appel went on to describe how often the machines are vulnerable.

"These voting machines sit in county warehouses for the rest of the year, and if any unauthorized or unscrupulous person had access to them just once, they could be modified to cheat," Andrew said.

A spokeswoman for Sequoia, Michelle Shafer, dismissed his gloomy predictions. She insisted that if someone did tamper with the machine, it would not go unnoticed by election officials.

"Even if somebody were to attempt to get into one voting machine, in order to do any kind of damage, they would have to have access to every single voting unit, have it be undetected on those units, and also back at election headquarters," Shafer said.

She said no such instance of hacking had taken place in the 19 years the company had employed the Advantage machines.

California law now requires electronic voting machines to issue paper receipts, a measure Appel said is essential for minimizing voter fraud."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 10:14 AM | Permalink. . .

February 19, 2007

"Special election costs detailed"

"Just what does an election cost the county?

According to Mendocino County Assessor-Clerk-Recorder Marsha Wharff, the figure depends on the number of contests on the ballot, and the jurisdictions they are sponsored by.

"Every election is different," Wharff said.

This week, she explained to The Daily Journal how her office computed the estimated $150,000 cost the county stands to incur from the District Attorney Special Election set for April 3.

"When we make an estimate, we base it on what past elections have cost us," Wharff said.

Here's how the $150,000 breaks down:

Sample and official ballots: $60,000

According to Wharff, 63,750 ballots have been ordered for the special election. That's 3,250 less than were ordered for November general election.

"We can order less for a special election because the turnout is generally less," Wharff said. "We base our orders on what we believe we're going to need."

The article is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 11:25 AM | Permalink. . .

"Campaign Strengthens For a Voting Paper Trail"

From the Washington Post.

"Efforts are intensifying in Congress to pass legislation that would require electronic touch-screen voting machines used in federal elections to provide paper trails that could be checked in the case of a recount.

The new momentum is the result of lingering concerns about the machines as the 2008 presidential primaries fast approach, as well as strong support for changes by the new Democratic majority, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the Rules Committee, taking a leading role.

"We are closer to paper-trail legislation than we have been before," said Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org, an elections clearinghouse.

"Democrats are committed to election-reform legislation that requires all voting machines produce a paper trail," said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

The work at the national level echoes moves in many states. Often under pressure from voting-rights groups, 27 states have decided to require paper trails."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 11:20 AM | Permalink. . .

February 16, 2007

"Primary move would cost Solano estimated $1.1 million"

"The proposed move of California's presidential primary to February would cost Solano County an added $1.1 million and one Vallejo politician is not pleased.

Although state legislators have promised to reimburse all of the associated costs, Solano's Registrar of Voters Ira Rosenthal said his office plans on lobbying state groups and officials to ensure they pick up the tab.

"Because of the attention this legislation is attracting and the importance this has for our Legislature, I think they will pay," Rosenthal said.

County supervisor Barbara Kondylis, of Vallejo, said she doesn't trust the state.

"They promise a lot, but don't always come through," Kondylis said.

"We'll be at the state legislators' throats if they don't reimburse us," she said.

Senate Bill 113, which is designed to give California more influence in selecting presidential candidates, would split off the presidential primary from the June 3, 2008 election date. However, as the presidential primary would be the only portion moved, the remaining contests on the ballot would remain on the June ballot."

The article is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:13 AM | Permalink. . .

$82 Buys Voting Secrets

"For a mere $82 a computer scientist and electronic voting critic managed to purchase five $5,000 Sequoia electronic voting machines over the internet last month from a government auction site. And now he's taking them apart.

Princeton computer science professor Andrew Appel and his students have begun reverse-engineering the software embedded in the machines' ROM chips to determine if it has any security holes. But Appel says the ease with which he and his students opened the machines and removed the chips already demonstrates that the voting machines are vulnerable to unauthorized modification.

Their analysis appears to mark the first time that someone who hasn't signed a non-disclosure agreement with Sequoia Voting Systems has examined one of its machine's internals.

Appel bought the machines from election officials in Buncombe County, North Carolina, who offered them for sale at GovDeals.com, a site for government agencies to buy and sell surplus and confiscated equipment. The county sold 144 machines in lots of varying amounts. It paid $5,200 for each machine in 1997. To buy the machines, Appel had to pay $82 and only needed to provide a name, address, phone number and e-mail address.

Sequoia and other voting machine companies have long resisted calls from voting activists to make their proprietary software transparent to the public, because they say it would allow hackers to study the software and devise ways to plant malicious code in it. But Appel says his purchase of the machines shows how easy it is for hackers to obtain and study the software anyway.

"There are hundreds of counties in the country that have had these machines for 20 years," Appel says. "To assume that nobody could have ever had access to those machines to fool around with them in the last 20 years ... that's a stretch. And now it's certainly not true."

The article is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:09 AM | Permalink. . .

February 15, 2007

San Francisco M ay Require e-voting Disclosure

"San Francisco could become one of the first cities to require an electronic voting company to disclose the details of its software in an effort to ensure all votes are counted.

Electronic voting machines have stirred controversy as voter-rights activists say the machines cannot be trusted, especially since the software used to tally votes is kept secret.

More than 20 voter-rights advocates turned out at a Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee hearing Wednesday to oppose the proposed $12.6 million four-year contract with Sequoia Voting Systems Inc.

Under the contract, The City would receive 610 optical scan voting machines (machines that read a paper ballot) and 610 touch-screen voter machines, intended for use only by the disabled.

“This system is going to be a paper-based system. It’s not going to be an electronic-based system. The voters aren’t going to see any difference at all,” said John Arntz, the city’s elections director.

Supervisor Chris Daly, chairman of the committee, postponed the vote on the contract until next week, putting pressure on Sequoia to agree to an unprecedented commitment to disclose its software details.

“I’m not prepared to move forward with this contract language without some public disclosure of your technology within the contract,” Daly said. “We’re willing to discuss this,” said Steven Bennett, representing Sequoia. Voting machine companies have kept their software private citing proprietary reasons."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:22 AM | Permalink. . .

February 14, 2007

Senator Feinstein urges federal e-voting probe

"No one's sure whether touch-screen electronic voting machines used in Sarasota County, Florida were solely to blame for some 18,000 votes that went unrecorded in a tight congressional race last fall.

But the incident is cause for a "top-to-bottom" investigation of the voting system and software used in that race and more broadly, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a Wednesday letter to the Government Accountability Office.

Feinstein, the chairwoman of a Senate panel with jurisdiction over election matters, asked the federal watchdog agency to compile information about irregularities in direct-recording electronic voting systems, or DREs, which do not typically produce a paper record.

She requested that investigators scrutinize both the 2004 and 2006 elections and include in their research the ES&S iVotronic System used in Sarasota, the Avante Touch Screen, the Diebold's TSX, the Sequoia/Smartmatic HAAT (Hybrid Activator, Accumulator & Transmitter), and the Sequoia AVC Edge System."

The story is here.

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 02:18 PM | Permalink. . .

"Recount officially requested"

"Supervisorial candidate Janet Nguyen's campaign today officially requested a recount of the ballots that delivered opponent Trung Nguyen a seven-vote victory in the Feb. 6 special election.

The campaign is still pondering whether it will ask for a complete or partial recount, and which ballots it would like counted first. Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said he cannot begin the recount until he receives that notification, which he expects Wednesday or Thursday.

Kelley said he and his workers would then need a day or two to prepare for the recount. Legally, the recount can start no later than Tuesday. Kelley said once the counting beings, it would take about three days for the process to be completed – less for a partial recount."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:14 AM | Permalink. . .

"Fix the machines"

From the SF Chronicle:.

"TECHNOLOGY ought to make vote counting faster, more convenient and immune to fraud. Instead, it has inspired suspicion and doubt with each election adding to the problem.

Washington has had enough. Democrats in the House and Senate are drawing up bills requiring paper printouts of what's recorded by electronic vote-tabulating machines.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs a committee overseeing voting, says she will produce a bill to preserve each vote on a paper printout. A similar House bill has the backing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

California already mandates these so-called paper trails, which can be saved for recounts or ballot disputes. But many states have switched to touch-screen systems, which don't have this feature, leading some voters to worry if their votes are counted correctly.

The on-and-off debate over electronic voting has re-started because of yet another Florida ballot dustup. Some 18,000 touch-screen ballots failed to record votes in a congressional district race that was won by 369 votes. The loser, a Democrat, is trying to prove that faulty electronic machines skewed the count. Republicans say a confusing ballot design led voters to skip the district. The episode has led Florida's governor to seek a ban on all touch-screen balloting.

The country's patience is clearly wearing thin. Printing a supermarket-style receipt for a voter to see -- and authorities to keep for recounts -- appears to be a solution, even if it comes with tradeoffs."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 07:18 AM | Permalink. . .

February 13, 2007

"Texas Dems Sue Over Electronic Voting

"The Texas Democratic Party sued the state's top election official Tuesday alleging that widely used eSlate electronic voting equipment doesn't properly record straight-party balloting.

The federal lawsuit over the voting machines made by Hart InterCivic claims straight-party votes cast with the equipment aren't fully tabulated if the voter goes through the ballot and selects certain candidates down the list as if to "emphasize" a decision.

In those cases, the vote for an emphasized candidate is lost, even though that might be the candidate the voter most wanted to support, said Buck Wood, an attorney for the party and for a Democrat in Madison County who is challenging an election he lost in which eSlate voting equipment was used.

The equipment doesn't collect and record votes the same as other voting systems used in the state and thus violates the U.S. Constitution, the Democrats allege.

The Texas secretary of state's office and Hart InterCivic knew of the problem before the eSlate equipment was used in the November general election, Wood said.

"They tested these machines. They knew that this was a problem," Wood said."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 03:59 PM | Permalink. . .

February 12, 2007

" February Primary: Who Pays, And When?"

"It's hard to call what happened today in a Senate committee shocking news: legislation to move California's presidential primary in 2008 to February 5 cleared its first hurdle, with a vote by the full Senate now expected as soon as early next week [early reports had speculated it could be brought up this week].

More interesting than the progress of an early primary in California, though, is a new twist on a familiar debate: who pays for all of these special elections?

SB 113 by Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) was approved by the Senate Elections Committee in a short hearing this morning. Speaking to reporters afterward, Calderon reiterated why California should fast forward the process from June to February. "New Hampshire and Iowa, as they are really wonderful states, they don't reflect the diversification in this country," he said.

What will it cost? No one's numbers are yet definitive, but early estimates range from $56 million up to about $90 million. The potential higher costs of this election, compared to the 2005 special election's $39 million, are due to the fact that there aren't any local elections scheduled for that day... in other words, there aren't any costs that would have already been incurred.

So, who pays? State lawmakers say they agree, in concept, that local governments should be reimbursed. But when representatives of the state's counties suggested today that SB 113 be amended to make that perfectly clear, some committee members said the bill didn't need to be amended-- because 2004's Proposition 1A ensures that the state will reimburse the counties."

The article is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 12:24 PM | Permalink. . .

"Election outcome remains unsettled"

"Janet Nguyen hung on to the hope Thursday that she may legally be able to surmount that slender, seven-vote margin in the supervisor race while the winner, Trung Nguyen, toured what he believes will be his new office.

Lawyers for Janet Nguyen may go to court today to try to stop certification of the election. They said the race is still winnable for her. They plan to question the accuracy of the election machines and the registrar of voters' determination on some provisional ballots. The campaign has already determined that it will request a recount.

"We have an excellent chance of getting seven votes switched," said Dave Gilliard, Janet Nguyen's campaign consultant. "At seven votes, I think the race is still very much up in the air."

Trung Nguyen, meanwhile, spent Thursday making plans for serving as supervisor. He was talking to potential advisers, said his lawyer, Michael Schroeder, and visited the supervisors' offices on the fifth floor of the Orange County Hall of Administration."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 10:00 AM | Permalink. . .

February 08, 2007

More Diebold Woes

"Vote totals couldn’t be pulled from memory cards of some electronic voting machines used in a special election, forcing poll workers to transport the machines to Cuyahoga County’s election headquarters for results to be counted.

Elections officials read the results off the machines’ built-in flash memory and none of Tuesday’s votes were lost, elections board director Michael Vu said Wednesday.

“Everything has been accounted for,” he said.

Elections officials have not determined why the memory cards from 12 of the 33 voting machines in suburban Independence could not be read Tuesday night.

The problem happened the same day the elections board announced Vu had resigned effective March 1. Under Vu, the state’s most populous county had a botched primary election and saw the convictions of two workers who mishandled the 2004 presidential recount.

After memory card readers that the county bought last year from Diebold Election Systems didn’t read the votes Tuesday, officials tried but failed to download the data using voting machines at election headquarters, Vu said.

Poll workers then drove the machines to the downtown headquarters in vans. Officials read votes off the memory, which duplicates what’s on the cards, Vu said."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:06 AM | Permalink. . .

"Mail-only elections on considered"

"Contra Costa County election chief Steve Weir is asking lawmakers today to give California counties the option to conduct mail-only elections in the proposed February presidential primary.

"We have several counties where a majority of the voters already vote by mail," said Weir, also chairman of the California Association of Clerks and Elected Officials, "and they would like the option of a mail-only election if we're going to have four elections in 365 days."

Weir won't seek mail-only for Contra Costa County, where 34 percent of its registered voters cast their ballots by mail.

"I don't think Contra Costa is ready for it," Weir said.

But more than half the voters in Solano, Sonoma, Marin and Monterey counties already vote by mail, Weir said. Under the proposal, each county's Board of Supervisors would make the decision.

Voting by mail is cheaper than precinct voting because it doesn't require trained poll workers or expensive voting machines, "but doing both is the most expensive option," Weir said. "Money is not the guiding issue, but we need to look at what's going to work to get the most people voting and voting successfully."

Weir's request was likely to fall on deaf ears when testifying before the Senate Election Committee in Sacramento today. The association had hoped to incorporate the mail-only ballot option into Senate Bill 113, which would create a February 2008 California presidential primary.

But staffers of legislative leaders on both sides of the political aisle and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration "told me the idea is a non-starter," Weir said.

"The governor is always interested in saving money," Schwarzenegger press secretary Aaron McLear said, "but he doesn't want to do something that will hinder the democratic process. That why we have to debate the issue and decide what's best."

A spokeswoman for Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, said the senator will comment on mail-only voting after the hearing.

Critics fear mail-only voting would disenfranchise citizens who have never voted by mail and may not want to switch. It could also discourage poor people, they say, who may move frequently and have difficulty receiving their mail in a timely manner.

Yet, advocates say voter turn-out remains strong in Oregon, whose voters have cast their ballots entirely by mail since 2004, and Washington state, where 37 of its 39 counties conduct mail-only elections. About a quarter of Californians, on average statewide, vote by mail."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:02 AM | Permalink. . .

February 07, 2007

Initiative Requiring Paper Ballot Record To Be Circulated

From the Attorney General title and summary for the initiative measure:

"TANGIBLE BALLOTS. DIRECT-RECORDING ELECTRONIC DEVICES. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Amends definition of “ballot” to require votes on a direct-recording electronic device, such as a touchscreen, result in a paper or other tangible ballot. Requires paper or other tangible ballot to be a physical object that may be indelibly marked by voters’ physical action and be susceptible to counting through use of ordinary physical senses. Does not prohibit use of electronic, mechanical, or optical voting or vote counting, so long as tangible physical object result."

Other information about this proposed measure is available from the Secretary of State's press release.

You can read the text of the "California Tangible Ballot Act of 2008" here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 12:29 PM | Permalink. . .

"All-Mail Election Voting Has Its Skeptics"

"Oregon already does it, even in presidential elections, but for California, the idea of an all-mail voting system is new and quite controversial. The concept is facing an uphill battle among skeptical lawmakers in Sacramento even though many Bay Area voters seem to like casting their vote at the mailbox.

It's already all the rage in some Bay Area counties -- voting by mail, rather than taking a trip to the local polling place. In fact, in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey and Sonoma counties, a majority of voters used absentee ballots in last November's gubernatorial election.

Steve Weir, Contra Costa Clerk: "It's either permanent absentee or the voter gets their sample ballot and says, 'Oh, I want to vote by mail."

On Wednesday, Contra Costa Clerk, Steve Weir, will head to Sacramento to encourage lawmakers to allow individual counties to choose all mail-in ballots in the 2008 presidential primary, in part, to save money.

Steve Weir: "The suggestion is, if a county board of supervisors says, 'Yes, we want this election all by mail,' that they should be given that option."

But there are those who argue, there's only one proper place to cast a ballot, and it has nothing to do with the U.S. mail."

The article is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 08:51 AM | Permalink. . .

February 06, 2007

"Holt pushes paper to back up election results"

"With Democrats controlling Congress, Rep. Rush Holt says he's optimistic about achieving his longstanding legislative priority this year -- requiring electronic voting machines to have paper backups so election results can be verified.

The Hopewell Township Democrat plans to reintroduce his paper-backup bill on Monday with 150 Democratic and Republican co-sponsors. Garden State lawmakers -- all Democrats -- who've signed on to the bill are Reps. Frank Pallone, Donald Payne, Bill Pascrell, Rob Andrews and Steve Rothman.

A total of 222 House Democrats and Republicans co-sponsored a similar bill Holt introduced in the previous Congress, when Republicans were in the majority, but it went nowhere. The legislation is widely expected to become law, with Democratic leaders tending to favor requiring a paper trail, analysts say."

The article is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 12:47 PM | Permalink. . .

February 02, 2007

"Why Voting Needs a Paper Trail"

From Time Magazine:

"In an effort to break the distrust that still lingers in Florida seven years after the 2000 Presidential race, the state's newest Republican governor is doing something unheard of: He's teaming up with Democrats to pull the plug on the high-tech machines touted as the answer to election embarrassment and pushed by his technology loving predecessor, Jeb Bush.

After the 2000 Presidential election debacle, Florida officials responded to "hanging chads" and "butterfly ballots" by pumping millions into techno-savvy electronic voting machines. They justified the cost by saying those video arcade-like devices would forever end the controversy caused by stone age systems that included punch cards and paper ballots. They didn't.

Instead, a string of opponents from conspiracy theorists to computer analysts and civil libertarians said officials pushed the reforms too radically and blasted touch-screens for their lack of the human element. Human error was largely to blame for the 2000 fiasco ultimately resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court, but a fully electronic system would have limited ability to retabulate votes in a close contest.

On Thursday, newly elected Florida Governor Charlie Crist and Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida unveiled a $32.5 million plan to replace touch screens with optical scanners capable of churning out a paper trail. Those video machines that remained for early ballots of voters with special needs would be equipped with printers. "You go to an ATM machine, you get some kind of a record. You go to the gas station, you get a record." Crist said a day early as he briefed newspaper editors. "If there's a need for a recount, it's important to have something to count."

California led the way with VVPAT, imposing requirements over two years ago.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 02:00 PM | Permalink. . .

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