BY MARY ELLEN KLAS
meklas@MiamiHerald.com
TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Charlie Crist will recommend on Thursday that Florida's problem-plagued touchscreen voting machines should go the way of the butterfly ballot -- the trash heap -- and his proposed budget will recommend replacing them all with optical scan machines, which produce a paper trail, at a cost of up to $35 million.
U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Boca Raton Democrat, will join the governor in Palm Beach County to announce that his proposed budget will include the money to pay for replacing the machines in 15 counties, said Josh Rogin, Wexler's deputy chief of staff.
''It's something we've been working on for a long time,'' Rogin said of Wexler's six-year battle to require counties to have a paper trail.
Rogin said the governor's office will recommend replacing the touchscreen machines with optical-scan machines, even though counties have spent millions acquiring the equipment.
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