EDITORIAL: Voting machine paper trail

The secretary of state should stick to his guns on this matter

Nevada's state Board of Examiners voted Tuesday to buy more than 4,500 new electronic voting machines, meaning the rest of Nevada will now join Clark County in the computer voting age.

Secretary of State Dean Heller has ruled the old punch card readers that have been used for decades in Carson City and six other northern counties are no longer legal voting devices.

All but $463,600 of the nearly $9.3 million price tag will be transferred back from Washington under the "Help America Vote Act."

But the best news in Tuesday's vote is that the contract includes funds to purchase a special add-on attachment for each machine, creating a true, auditable paper record which can be checked by the voter and that will subsequently allow votes to be recounted (not merely "re-output" by the same, potentially corrupted computer discs).

The remaining roadblock to installing this long-overdue safeguard? Carson City Clerk Alan Glover warns he and other cow-county election officials are concerned that even if Sequoia Voting Systems gets them their machines in the next month, the counties won't be able to use them, because Mr. Heller insists they be able to produce the paper receipt.

Mr. Heller's chief deputy, Renee Parker, says installing those printers is no big deal. Though she does acknowledge there aren't yet any federal standards for the "Voter Verified Paper Trail" printing units.

Returning from a recent conference in Washington, Mr. Glover told other clerks there are no formal standards now and there "will be no standards in the foreseeable future."

He said his preference is that, if the printing attachments aren't certified in time, the counties be allowed to use the new machines without them.

But Mr. Heller has said he wants the printing units before the new electronic machines are used statewide. Ms. Parker, says if the federal government can't certify the new printing units, the contract approved Tuesday contains language designed to allow the state to hire experts to do the job at Sequoia's expense.

Good. Mr. Heller and his staff should stick by their guns. Efforts to ensure public confidence in the inviolability of the state's elections deserve support.