Woohoo - Gov signs law requiring paper ballots!

[sybylla]

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/index.php?ntid=67579&ntpid=0

New law ensures voting paper trail
Machines must generate ballot
By Anita Weier
January 4, 2006

Gov. Jim Doyle signed into law today a bill that will require that touch screen voting machines produce a verifiable paper ballot.

The bill requires that if a municipality uses an electronic voting system that consists of a voting machine, the machine must generate a complete paper ballot showing all votes cast by each elector that is visually verifiable by the elector before he or she leaves the machine.

"This is important for democracy. Voters have to be able to trust that their votes are counted," Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, said after the bill signing.

The bill, AB 627, also will ensure that reliable recounts can be done, added McCabe, whose organization lobbied for its enactment.

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[gizmo1979]

1. Where did this come from?

How did we squeak this through?I hadn't heard anything about this bill until I saw it on DU today.

[sybylla]

2. Mark Pocan introduced the bill last summer, iirc

I didn't think it would go anywhere and haven't heard anything about it since. I was quite surprised to see it signed into law today, too. I heard about it from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, who is usually pretty good about keeping their e-mail list up to date on this kind of stuff.

Somehow I missed it between the time it was introduced and the time it was passed.

[sybylla]

3. More info from LBN thread

Thread in LBN
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2021069

Link in LBN to more info
http://wistechnology.com/article.php?id=2585

...But perhaps more influential in the long term is the requirement that municipalities provide source code, and the more general condition that "the coding for the software that is used to operate the system on election day and to tally the votes cast is publicly accessible and may be used to independently verify the accuracy and reliability of the operating and tallying procedures to be employed at any election."

The bill passed the Assembly 91-4 and the Senate 29-2.

I wonder if this means all those counties, including mine who use optical scan ballots may need to upgrade their ballot counting machines to something more open and perusable.

[CatholicEdHead]

4. Congrats

We have had a law like this for many years and it will not be changing anytime soon.