Touch-screen printouts reconsidered (Florida)

[Freddie Stubbs]

Florida senators revived the idea of a paper trail for electronic voting, but not for the November election.

BY ERIKA BOLSTAD

[e-mail]


TALLAHASSEE - The Senate on Monday left the door wide open to equipping electronic voting machines with paper printers, but stopped short of outright endorsing the equipment.

The reversal in philosophy came from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who were considering a sweeping election reform bill that included a measure prohibiting manual recounts of votes cast on touch-screen equipment.

The committee scrubbed all references to forbidding such electronic recounts, leaving room for the idea that the 15 Florida counties using touch-screen equipment might join California and require that touch-screen machines give voters what's known as a voter-verifiable receipt. Voters would be able to see and verify a paper copy of their decision before finalizing their electronic vote.

NO BIG DEAL

''I don't see what the big deal is. If you can land a rover on Mars and search for water, you can get a receipt,'' said Miami Sen. Alex Villalobos, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

more: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/8417117.htm

[trumad]

1. the door wide open my ass!

Not for the November elections..how convienant...

[Cassandra]

2. Villalobos obviously hasn't gotten the memo

from Rove. When he does, he'll se what the big deal is.

[Freddie Stubbs]

4. Villalobos is a Republican

so we will see if there is any change in position before this thing goes anywhere.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Yeah!

After the Supreme Court intervened in 2000, you'd think the Florida Senate and legislature would have implimented one system for all counties and that they would all leave paper trails. This new look to add paper trails won't affect my county because we already use paper ballots that are scanned in a machine. This is a Republican county. But I'm glad that they're thinking about putting them in Democratic counties.