This sounds like the best possible plan -- one that establishes a paper trail for vote verification.

A federal panel voted yesterday to begin developing a national standard that could result in the gradual phasing out of the paperless electronic voting machines in use across the Washington region and in many parts of the country.

The "next generation" of voting systems should have an independent means of verifying election results, the Technical Guidelines Development Committee said. The standard would have to be adopted by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

"This seems to mark the end of an era" for paperless electronic voting, said Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org, a nonpartisan organization that tracks changes in the country's election systems.

The commission and its advisory panel have yet to determine when the new standard would go into effect and how it would apply. A report prepared by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology last week said the new standard would not be implemented until 2009 at the earliest.

Now I trust the system we have here in Harris County (the eSlate), but still believe that a system with a paper trail needs to be adopted. I encouraged our county election official to adopt such system several years ago, but that advice was not taken. The reality is that I like optical scanners, because they leave a verifiable, voter-marked system whereby we can manually count what the voter marked if necessary, while still quickly scanning and recording them.

On the other hand, this system still worries me. Do you really want your vote entrusted to the United States Postal Service?

Posted by: Greg at 12:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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