'Paper trail' printer jams can gum up vote recounts

[Doondoo]

It may seem as straightforward as giving a customer a receipt at a gas pump or ATM, but some elections experts say adding a "paper trail" to electronic voting machines could create new headaches in close races. Gov. Charlie Crist has proposed adding printers to previously paperless electronic voting machines as one component of his $32.5 million election reform plan. If Florida legislators agree, they'll also have to decide how to count votes in a tight election if a piece of high-tech voting equipment experiences a low-tech paper jam.

"It does not happen often. But the point is, it does happen," says Larry Lomax, the top elections official in Nevada's Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. The county has used touch-screen machines with printers since 2004.

Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning calls paper-jam fears overblown but says Crist's proposal will address them.

Crist wants to end paperless voting in Florida and eliminate the kinds of concerns that engulfed a Sarasota-area congressional race in November. The race was decided by 369 votes, with paperless electronic machines registering more than 18,000 blank ballots. The main piece of Crist's plan calls for replacing the paperless electronic touch screens used by about half the state's voters on Election Day with paper ballots that are read by optical scanners. Some touch screens would remain for the increasingly popular practice of early voting and to accommodate people with disabilities.

These remaining electronic devices would be outfitted with printers so voters could verify their choices before casting ballots. In a close race that requires a manual recount, Crist wants the paper printout of a voter's electronic selections to be the ballot of record. But if a printer experiences a jam or other malfunction and paper ballots are lost, Browning says Crist will propose that the electronic results from that machine be the official tally.

"I think, quite frankly, the paper-jam issue is a little overrated. But in the event it happens, there has to be some safety valve," Browning says.



http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/state/epaper/2007/02/24/m1a_PAPER_TRAIL_0225.html

[Stevepol]

1. ES&S makes its print-outs hard as hell to manage, encouraging jams

The printer paper roll on their Ivotronic is also very difficult to install, making it even more likely to malfunction. The print out is also not an easily read record of the vote but a "log" of everything that happens during the voting process. If these things are ever audited which is unlikely, it will be very difficult for the counters to read the results. In other words, ES&S has done everything in its power to make sure there is the highest possible likelihood of the things malfunctioning or screwing up, thus validating their contention that the paper is messier and less accurate than pure cyberspace. And this is the general and continuing attitude of all the voting machine companies except for the honest ones like Avante.

You don't just smell a rate here: you smell the stench of dead and dying rats stretching for miles and piled ten feet high.