Editorial: A ‘paper trail’ incentive

Thursday, Sept. 28, 2006 | 7:29 a.m.

In 1993 when Clark County first considered buying electronic voting machines, dozens of citizens occupied untold hours of the County Commission's time as they argued passionately for the machines to be equipped with the ability to produce a "paper trail."

It took many years but today all of the county's voting machines are so equipped. Many counties around the country, however, still use older electronic machines that cannot provide proof of how people voted in cases of alleged fraud or malfunctions.

One of the disincentives for counties to upgrade their voting machines to include this capacity is the cost of printing out all of the voting results if a need arises.

Congressional Democrats proposed emergency legislation this week that would provide federal funding to cover any costs associated with printing out ballots for the Nov. 7 general election. According to The New York Times, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., estimated the cost would not exceed $10.1 million even if ballots were printed for half of the 27 million voters expected to use touch-screen machines.

Barbara Burt, an elections expert with the consumer group Common Cause, told the Times, "Lack of funding has been the main excuse that local election officials have used to avoid implementing paper precautions. This takes that excuse away from them entirely."

With every election season marred somewhere in the country by voting machine failure, we see such legislation as a positive step toward ensuring more accurate vote tallies.