electionline Weekly: State Legislators, Election Officials Tackle Voting Issues

[Wilms]

State legislators, election officials tackle voting issues

Paper trails, voter ID, early voting on the agenda

electionline Weekly – January 18, 2007

By Sean Greene
electionline.org

With the beginning of the New Year comes the start of many state legislative sessions, and both lawmakers and election officials are considering a variety of changes to the election process in 2007 – some reacting to problems that arose in the last vote and others the continuation of trends around the country in recent years.

In Colorado, officials have completed reviews to examine what went wrong in several jurisdictions, including Denver, when problems with poll books led to long lines and irate voters.

Other proposals by lawmakers around the country could expand or adjust early voting or no-excuse absentee voting, increase the number of states requiring voter-verified paper audit trails with electronic voting machines and alter voter verification requirements at the polls.

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Not surprisingly, legislative efforts to add voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPATs) to direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines are on the agenda in several states. Before the 2006 election cycle, nearly half of states already required DREs to print paper versions of ballots that voters could examine. Last November’s troubled vote in Florida’s 13th Congressional District that included an unusually high number of non-votes in the race for the U.S. House, has added both urgency and timeliness to calls for paper backups of electronic ballots. Similarly, a number of lawmakers could take it a step further, asking their colleagues to approve measures that would outlaw the use of DREs altogether, instead requiring their states to use optical-scan systems or other paper-based balloting.

* Bills requiring VVPATs have been filed in Florida, Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. (In some of these states multiple bills on the topic have been proposed.)

* Legislation also in Virginia would require jurisdictions to use paper ballots.

* In Kentucky, Secretary of State Trey Grayson (R) has said that a committee will study issues related to implementing VVPATs.

* News reports in Indiana indicate that Rep. Dennis Avery, D-Evansville, is considering proposing VVPAT legislation.

* A voter advocacy group in Iowa is pushing legislators there to return to paper ballots.

snip/links

http://www.electionline.org/Newsletters/tabid/87/ctl/Detail/mid/643/xmid/234/xmfid/3/Default.aspx