U.S. Senate sees first bill to ban paperless voting

Media release

February 13, 2007

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The first Senate bill that would ban paperless voting nationwide was introduced today by a U.S. senator from the state that has come to symbolize election problems for its controversial handling of the 2000 presidential recount and a more recent disputed congressional election in Sarasota.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL ) filed the bill aimed at shoring up the nation's electronic voting system and restoring voter confidence in the way all states record, tabulate and verify votes. Nelson's legislation would require all electronic voting systems, including so-called touch-screen machines, to produce a checkable paper record. It also would ban conflicts of interest on the part of state election czars who would be banned from working for others' campaigns.

In 2000, then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris oversaw Florida's recount while also serving as a top campaign official for GOP candidate George W. Bush.

"If Congress doesn't get this done, I'm afraid our democracy could die from lack of legitimacy," said Nelson, who serves on the Senate's Armed Services, Foreign Relations, Intelligence, Commerce, Budget and Aging committees.

Nelson's bill is pretty much a companion to legislation filed in the House last week by U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, except it bans conflict of interest on the part of elections officials. Both bills also require random audits of paper records against electronic tabulations in every congressional district.

Chances are lawmakers may pass such a bill this year given the increased public attention to problems with voting systems in a number of elections around the country and the recent shift in power in Congress from Republicans to Democrats.

Perhaps the most noticed instance of voting trouble involved the election for the 13th congressional district in Sarasota. There, touch-screen machines left no paper verification for 18,000 people who voted in other races on the ballot but registered no choice in their congressional race.

The Republican House candidate won by only 369 votes. But a major newspaper analysis of the so-called "undervotes" found they leaned heavily Democratic.

Currently, more than twenty states - including Florida - don't require voting machines to produce a paper record. But in the absence of congressional action so far, the push for reforms to the voting system is gaining momentum among the states.

In recent months, Virginia and Maryland have begun a shift to voting systems with a paper trail, and the newly elected Florida Gov. Charlie Crist recently proposed spending $32.5 million to replace the state's touch-screen machines with optical-scanners, which provide an automatic paper record of votes - a move Nelson praised.

Last week, the Senate held its first hearing on voting reform, where Nelson was the first among a group of experts to testify before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. Other senators, including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who heads the Rules panel, are expected to introduce voting reform legislation in the coming days.

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