Word: nelsons
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...reversal since then couldn't be more stunning - as indicated by a bill in Congress introduced this past week by Florida Senator Bill Nelson and Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, which would ban touch-screen voting (also known as direct recording electronic voting, or DRE) in federal elections starting in 2012. "We have to start setting a goal on this," Nelson tells TIME. "Voters have to feel confident that their ballot will count as intended...
...Nelson-Whitehouse legislation - which also requires routine audits in at least 3% of the precincts in all federal elections, and contemplates mandating paper-trail capability on any type of voting technology as early as the 2008 election - is the clearest sign yet of the stampede away from touch-screen. Its backers, like Dan McCrea, head of the Florida Voters Coalition, insist bills like this are necessary to get states to move to optical scanning, even if they are understandably reluctant to trash their investments in DRE. McCrea calls that foot-dragging the electoral equivalent of "buying a fleet of Pintos...
...Nelson-Whitehouse bill would appropriate as much as $1 billion to help states move back to optical scanning (or any method that provides a reliable paper trail). "Unless someone can come up with a foolproof method of producing a paper trail with touch-screen machines, this is how we need to go," says Nelson, pointing out that attempts up to now to make DRE paper-trail compatible have too often led to printer paper jams and other "screw...
...Nelson's consultants, Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who oversees the state's elections, was himself an advocate of touch-screen voting as the elections supervisor of the county that includes Tampa. But since then, while he still believes the "DRE system itself" is sound, he acknowledges the system's margin for "the human error factor" has proven great enough to cause the new inertia. "There's not a lot you can do to mess up with optical scanning," says Browning. "We believe we're doing the right thing in Florida...
...while Florida (which passed Crist's touch-screen ban this past spring) has given itself an almost two-year run-up to its 2008 changes, Browning worries many states may not be able to meet the paper-trail requirements by next November, particularly since the Nelson-Whitehouse bill may not even pass until well into next year. Browning, as a result, feels the 2010 elections may be a more feasible target - and would give states more time to simply get rid of DRE and bring in optical scanning rather than spending more money in 2008 to add paper-trail capacity...