Word: screens
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...that method, votes are marked on a sheet (which is retained for auditing purposes) and then electronically scanned. That system got a boost late last year when the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which advises the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, issued a highly critical assessment of touch-screen in favor of optical scanning." I get a receipt when I go to the bank or get gas," Crist told TIME, urging voting methods that provide a paper trail, "so why not for the most precious thing we have, the vote...
...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...
...didn't take long for voters to lose trust in the new system, as they increasingly deemed DRE too complex, unreliable and insecure; the only thing worse than a confusing paper trail, it turned out, was no paper trail at all. (It didn't help that the main touch-screen machine supplier, Diebold, was widely accused in 2004 of ties to the Republican Party.) Fifteen Florida counties adopted touch-screen as well, and they learned the pitfalls of it the hard way, dealing with controversies like a 2006 congressional race in the Sarasota district, where an astonishing...
...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...