Paper a Winner Again in Future U.S. Election Cycles

You could call it buyer's remorse. Five US states went all in on electronic voting machines, and four of those states are poised to get out. according to CNET (New York., N.Y., USA).

Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina are the only states relying solely on voting machines that produce no paper record of an individual voter's ballot. All but Georgia are on the cusp of swapping those out for new machines that print out a paper record of each completed ballot -- and Georgia is under pressure to do the same. None, though, would yet be ready for next week's midterm elections.

It's the next step in voting systems since Florida's infamous hanging chads and butterfly ballots determined the 2000 presidential election.

As a quick review: Nationwide, the votes for Al Gore and George W. Bush were so close that election results hinged on the state of Florida, including Palm Beach County. There, the elections supervisor had implemented ballots that spread across two pages of the Votamatic punch card. Voters couldn't tell where, exactly, they needed to punch. And in counties around the state, election officials were forced to distinguish among hanging, dimpled, dangling and even swinging chads (the bits left over after the hole punch) to determine valid votes. The debacle prodded election officials in several states and counties to move as far away from paper as possible.

Since then, officials have largely discovered that paper still plays a crucial role: creating an audit trail that verifies votes haven't been altered by hackers or computer glitches. Voting machine software is most vulnerable to hacks in person, but online manipulation is possible, too. And software problems -- like the one noticed by early voters in Texas in October -- might cause a voter's choice to be changed.

Delaware, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina are on course to switch to voting machines that offer a happy medium between paper and digital -- with electronic booths that also print out ballots, making it easy for voters and election officials to confirm that votes were cast as intended.

That audit trail boosts "voter confidence," said Tyler Brey, press secretary for the Louisiana secretary of state. "Before you cast your ballot, you'll be able to look on a piece of paper and see how that machine is going to vote."

The catch? These new voting systems are expensive. South Carolina's election officials, for example, have requested $60 million from the state legislature to replace all of that state's voting machines.

That's money well spent for Louisiana voter George Charlet III, who's been casting his ballot on a purely digital voting machine since 2002. "I want the peace of mind where I know nothing could go wrong," Charlet said.