Electronic Voting Bill Introduced

Rush Hold (D-NJ) introduced a bill meant to deal with the problematic issues having to do with computerized voting. One of the main issues from the last election was a lack of paper trail and printed verification. As it stands, states that have the electronic voting and no paper trail are also states that will no longer have any recounts or challenges to the computer vote. There is no way to isolate the problems because an electronic recount will give the same results as the first count.

The new bill called the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act would ensure that paper trails are mandatory and that PAPER RECORDS become the final decider in any kind of recount. It also requires automatic audits which I think is another welcome check on the voting process.

The fact that there is no paper trail or ability to track back any possible tampering is a blow to democracy. These machines are touted as tamper proof and reliable, which in my opinion is never 100 percent guaranteed. Somebody somewhere will find a way whether it be attaching something to the outside of the machine to throw it off or getting into the hardware itself.

I'd rather rely on a more imperfect system that uses paper with built in checks than a sealed unchallengeable computer system.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070401-congress-finally-considers-aggressive-e-voting-overhaul.html