Doubt dooms paperless voting, election chiefs say [View All]

[DoYouEverWonder]

November 30, 2006

ORLANDO — When hanging chads and Palm Beach County's "butterfly ballot" put the kibosh on punch-card voting six years ago, Florida's elections chiefs ventured boldly into the new frontier of paperless electronic voting.

Now they are preparing - reluctantly - for a possible return to the paper era.

Amid the uproar over blank electronic votes in a tight congressional race in Sarasota County and the prospect of "paper-trail" legislation from Washington and Tallahassee, elections supervisors meeting here this week say paperless voting appears to be on its way out.

There aren't many skeptics of paperless systems among Florida elections officials. But they acknowledge skepticism among voters.

"I still contend we don't need a paper backup," says Pasco County Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning, one of the state's most forceful defenders of electronic voting. "But you get to a point where public opinion has now taken a driver seat on this engine going down the track, and now it has picked up some passengers."

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/state/epaper/2006/11/30/m1a_ELECTION_1130.html


For the money they waste on these machines that can't even count, you could hire a lot of people to hand count paper ballots.