E-Voting Commission Gets Earful

By Michael Grebb, Wired News, May 6, 2004



Excerpts:



Passions ran high Wednesday at the first public hearing of the Election Assistance Commission, where activists and manufacturers of electronic voting machines clashed over whether new e-voting systems should include a voter-verifiable paper trail that auditors could use to recount votes if necessary.



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...the commission's chairman said he didn't expect the bipartisan panel would issue national standards requiring paper receipts when it makes preliminary recommendations next week, followed by more detailed guidelines next month.



"We will not decide on what machines people will buy," said the chairman, Republican DeForest B. Soaries Jr., saying it wasn't the panel's role to tell states what to do. "We will say, if California wants to have a backup paper system, what national standards it should follow."



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When California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley took the podium, a crowd of supporters cheered.



On Friday, Shelley banned the use of one model of Diebold's voting machines in four California counties, and decertified all touch-screen systems unless counties that own them implement 23 security requirements. At least one county is filing suit against Shelley for his actions, and others may follow.