Paper Reduction Act Gone Awry

An example of electronic voting gone haywire:

January 9, 2004 - Wexler: "Florida State House Election Proves Need For Paper Trail" (Washington, D.C.) Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL), in a letter to Secretary of State Glenda Hood as well as Palm Beach and Broward county commissioners, expressed the danger of using only "touch-screen" voting machines to record an individual's vote. Wexler is calling for ballot printers to be affixed to touch-screen voting machines in order to print out individual voter-verifiable ballots. An article in today's South Florida Sun-Sentinel highlighted the close election in Florida's House District 91, where Ellyn Bogdanoff, a political consultant from Ft. Lauderdale, defeated Lauderdale-by-the-Sea Mayor Oliver Parker by only 12 votes. The Sun-Sentinel stated, "The remaining 134 invalid ballots cannot be manually recounted because they were cast electronically on computerized voting machines and there is no written records of those votes." This is the exact problem facing the 15 counties in Florida that use direct recording electronic (DRE) or touch-screen machines. "The result of this election is a huge wake-up call to the very real possibility of another election debacle in Florida. America's voters understand that elections are not exercises in expediency but in democracy, and the right to vote depends upon accuracy. Every ballot must be counted properly, and the means for a recount must be available. Without a tangible ballot individually verified by each voter, neither is possible," Wexler said.

A harbinger of next November?