NYT: Florida Moves to End Touchscreen Voting

[Tiggeroshii]

DELRAY BEACH, Fla., Feb. 1 — Gov. Charlie Crist today announced plans today to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of Florida’s largest counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election, instead adopting a statewide system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines.

Voting experts said Florida’s move, coupled with new federal voting legislation expected this year, could largely signal the death knell for the paperless electronic machines. If as expected the Florida Legislature approves the $32 million cost of the change, in fact, it will be the nation’s biggest repudiation yet of touch-screen voting, which was widely adopted after the 2000 recount as a state-of-the-art means of restoring confidence that everyone’s vote would count.

Several counties around the country, including Cuyahoga in Ohio and Sarasota in Florida, have exchanged touch-screen machines for others that provide a paper trail. But Florida could become the first state that invested heavily in recent rush to touch screens to reject them so sweepingly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/us/01cnd-voting.html?hp&ex=1170392400&en=ef9e9773e1e66b0f&ei=5094&partner=homepage