Paper Trails For Voting Machines Recommended

   Hey! Guess what? A federal advisory panel approved a revised proposal that pretty much says that states should use electronic voting machines so that the results can be verified. Can you say ' paper trail?'

   The U.S. Election Assistance Commission recommends that states use voting machines that produce a paper record. What is really funny is that they just rejected this similar idea a day or two ago.

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By STEPHEN MANNING, Associated Press Writer
Thu Dec 7, 2006

    The report said auditors should have a way to verify that the voting machines produced accurate results.

"If you have an error in an airplane and it goes down, you know it," said Ronald Rivest, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist and panel member who proposed both versions. "If you have an error in an election and the wrong person is announced the winner, you may not know it."

The panel deadlocked 6-6 on Monday over the first Rivest proposal, failing to get the eight votes needed to pass.

The revised proposal Tuesday addressed concerns that state elections boards would be burdened by making broad changes in voting technology and that paper records might not be accessible to blind or other disabled voters.     MORE