Congress gets new election bill to ban controversial machines

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Congress gets new election bill to ban controversial machines

Electronic touch voting machines won't be a component of future presidential and congressional elections, if Congress passes a new bill that bans most touch-screen devices and requires all voting machines to produce a paper receipt.

The legislation being filed today by U.S. Sens. Bill Nelson and Sheldon Whitehouse, comes after a meeting Nelson had early this morning with Florida's chief elections overseer Kurt Browning. Florida's secretary of state, Browning, met with Nelson in the nation's capital.

It was Florida that recently imposed a state ban on touch-screen voting machines, following tests that showed such machines were unreliable and vulnerable to error.

Nelson's bill would require all voting machines to produce a voter-verified paper trail by next year's presidential election and provides up to $1 billion for states to use for new voting equipment. The bill would phase out the use of touch-screen voting machines in federal elections by 2012.

"The bottom line is we have to ensure every vote is counted - and, counted properly," Nelson said. "Citizens must have confidence in the integrity of their elections."

The bill by Nelson, a Florida Democrat, and Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, was modeled in part after Florida's recently enacted initiative aimed at fixing glitches and technical errors that have marred elections there and led to disputes.

Nelson's bill would be the first to seek a ban on electronic touch-screen voting machines in federal elections nationwide, a provision Browning said he supports. More specifically, the bill says:

- A voter-verified paper ballot must be produced for every vote cast, beginning with the November 2008 elections.

- Direct recording electronic voting machines may not be used in federal elections, beginning in 2012.

- Routine random audits must be conducted by hand count in 3 percent of the precincts in all federal elections.

- An arms-length relationship is established between test labs and voting-machine vendors.

A companion version in the House, filed by U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, a Democrat from New Jersey, has been passed by a key committee and is awaiting a vote by the full chamber.

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