Not a peep in here about needing good audits, but at least they get the recount part.
Trust in Paper
The New York Times
May 5, 2007
Political experts this week were focused on how
the Florida Legislature has advanced its
presidential primary to a very early date: Jan.
29, 2008. But the real news, tucked into that
same legislation, is that by next summer
Floridians should be a lot more confident that
whenever they vote, their votes will finally be counted correctly.
Florida, of course, does not have a great history
on this score. First there was the trauma of the
hanging chads, and everything else that went
wrong, in the 2000 presidential election. Then
last year, in one of the most closely contested
Congressional races in the country, new
touch-screen machines somehow lost 18,000 votes.
Representative Vern Buchanan, a Republican, won
by 369 votes in a machine recount. But nobody
really knows why an extraordinary number of
voters in Sarasota County well more than enough
to make the race come out the other way
seemingly failed to vote in the hottest race on their ballot.
The new law will eliminate touch-screen voting in
favor of the more trustworthy optical-scanning
system. Unlike touch screens, optical-scanning
machines are based on paper. Voters mark a paper
ballot, much like a school achievement test,
which is then counted by computer.
And here's the most comforting part: that paper
ballot remains, and can be counted in a recount.
There are still, unfortunately, too many states
that have not made the leap back to paper that
Florida has. This means is that on Election Day,
the nation will still have a patchwork of secure
and insecure ballots across the country. What is
needed is for Congress to pass a bill being
pushed by Representative Rush Holt, Democrat of
New Jersey. That would give every citizen in the
nation the confidence that there is tangible
evidence a hard copy, if you will of every vote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/05/opinion/05sat2.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials