http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16584583.htmCrist wants voting paper trail
TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Charlie Crist wants to spend nearly $33 million to replace Florida's maligned ATM-style voting machines with systems that provide a clear paper trail.
The decision, if approved by state lawmakers, would end one of the most bitter election debates in Florida: whether the electronic touch-screen machines have bugs in their secret software that could make votes disappear.
Crist plans to make his announcement Thursday in Palm Beach County, home of the 2000 butterfly-ballot meltdown that led to the rise of the touch-screen machines in South Florida and other urban areas.
The governor wants to replace them with the optical-scan voting machines used in most areas of the state -- including Tallahassee's Leon County, where Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho has been a harsh critic of the touch-screen systems, used in 15 counties.
''This will help restore faith in democracy in Florida's elections, which have sadly been a laughingstock for way too long,'' Sancho said.