November 30, 2004
GOP backs paper trail?
Greedy, cynical bastards must have bought some stock in a printer company. Or perhaps it’s just a payoff to the GOP friendly manufacturers of voting machines, since there’s no way in hell for an outside company to come in and modify an existing and secretly proprietary voting machine.
The new chairman of the state House committee that deals with elections said he's open to considering paper audit trails for touch-screen voting machines.Rep. Ron Reagan, R-Bradenton, said he did not think there was anything wrong with the computer touch-screen machines used in 15 Florida counties this year, but he is willing to allow debate on whether there's a need to back them up with printers if the technology is available.
``It's something I think we do have to revisit,'' said Reagan, the new chairman of the House Ethics and Elections Committee.
His willingness to consider touch-screen paper trails echoes that of Gov. Jeb Bush, who opposed the idea running up to November's election, saying it wasn't feasible, but said the day after the election that if the technology becomes available, it should be pursued.
We absolutely need a paper trail, but I fully expect this crew to provide absolutely nothing meaningful. The system needs to print out a paper ballot that can be verified by the voter and later be counted by machine. Otherwise, there’s still no way to know if the computer that you’re voting on is really tallying your ballot the same way it was printed out.
Posted by Norwood at November 30, 2004 06:54 AM