Saturday at the General Assembly (Paper ballot mandated in NC)

[Kelvin Mace]

AP State News
- The Senate gave final passage to a bill that would allow only three types of voting methods in North Carolina and require a paper record of ballots cast on electronic machines. The bill, which now awaits Gov. Mike Easley's signature, was developed after Carteret County electronic voting machines lost 4,438 ballots in last November's election due to a programming error. It also requires state election officials to hand out more than $36 million in grants to meet new standards. Another bill, approved 46-2 and sent back for House concurrence, included a Carteret-inspired provision to allow known voters whose votes were lost to recast ballots during a two-week period after the election. Last fall's lost ballots were all cast in absentee "early voting," and records clearly indicated who had cast them.

A major victory in NC, although not a total victory. We will still have to watch the NC SBoE like a hawk to prevent it from continuing its cozy relationship with vendors and complete belief in the Election Center. The SBoE also still believes that there are "paperless" systems which are completely reliable and is determined to find some way getting around the paper requirement.

Another important development this past week was this:

Senators quietly amended a measure that addressed early counting of absentee votes to undo an unpopular provision in the just-passed state budget. The budget, signed into law Saturday by Gov. Mike Easley, contains an item that gives the governor sole power to name members of the state Board of Election. The bill approved 35-13 Saturday and sent for House concurrence would return the current system, in which the governor chooses from nominees sent to him by the chairs of the state Democratic and Republican parties. Easley was supposed to pick a new five-member board in May but that's been delayed in part because the nominees from Democratic party Chairman Jerry Meek didn't include one incumbent, attorney Bob Cordle of Charlotte.

Robert Cordle is adamantly OPPOSED to paper ballots and fought us tooth and nail on the Select Committee (he and I exchanged some "heated" words). After losing on the committee, he tried calling in favors with his political connections to scuttle the bill. He is completely in love with DREs and his exclusion from the SBoE would greatly cripple the "Diebold-can-do-no-wrong" crowd.

Easley was annoyed that his buddy didn't get submitted for re-appointment to the board and he had an amendment slipped in to the law to allow him to appoint anyone he pleased. The amendment above undoes this attempt to subvert the process.

(Mods - This story is a little old, but we missed it and it is very important to the ongoing fight against paperless voting).

[donsu]

1. great! it's good to know some progress is being made

thank you to the NC people who worked to get this

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. State by state, eh?

[Kelvin Mace]

3. Yeah, it is going to be a state-by-state fight