Cox, Stephens back paper vote receipts

By CARLOS CAMPOS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution     09/20/05

A move to outfit Georgia's electronic voting machines with a voter-verified paper receipt took a leap toward reality Tuesday when two key state leaders on opposite sides of the political spectrum announced support for such a project.

Secretary of State Cathy Cox ? who until Tuesday had opposed legislative efforts to retrofit Georgia's 28,000 voting machines with a printer capable of producing paper evidence of a cast ballot ? announced her office is working to implement the so-called voter-verified paper audit trail.
Just minutes after Cox's announcement, Sen. Bill Stephens (R-Canton) held a news conference, planned last week, where he told reporters that he will seek legislation to eventually move Georgia toward paper receipts by the 2008 presidential election.

Cox, a Democrat, is running for governor. Stephens, a Republican, is running for the secretary of state post. Such bipartisan support for paper receipts on Georgia's electronic voting machines all but assures they will become a reality.

The only unknown in the equation is cost. Estimates to retrofit Georgia's machines with printers vary widely, and House Speaker Glenn Richardson said earlier this year that cost was one of the factors standing in the way of paper receipts, given other pressing budget priorities like education and healthcare.

A paper audit trail might work something like this: In Nevada ? where Cox's staff has already traveled to observe the process ? voters cast a ballot by electronic touchscreen on a machine similar to Georgia's. Before pressing "cast ballot," a paper receipt under glass scrolls up, showing the voter his choices ? similar to purchases in a grocery store.

If the voter verifies that the choices on the electronic screen matches the paper receipt, he presses a button and the receipt disappears into a locked box. If the screen and receipt do not match, the voter can cancel the transaction and vote again, until the two correctly match.

Since the implementation of electronic voting machines nationwide, questions have risen as to the integrity and accuracy of the machines. Some respected computer security experts have suggested the machines can be easily tampered with to change the outcome of elections. Some activists have suggested that paper receipts verifying a voter's choices would help ease some of that suspicion.

But Cox and her staff have been critical of paper receipts in the past, with a laundry list of complaints about the technology. Cox's chief complaint has been that there is no national technological standard for the printers.

Tuesday, Cox sent out a release to media announcing her support for the receipts.

"I support paper receipts," Cox said in the statement. "We are pro-actively exploring options to modify and enhance Georgia's voting system to provide a voter-verified paper trail that gives voters even more confidence in our voting process."

Cox went on to say that her chief elections officer is working with federal officials "to design a reliable system and establish standards for voter-verified ballots."

Stephens, meanwhile, said the paper receipts are important so "people will have faith and belief in the votes they cast."

Cox has been dogged in the past two years by a small, but highly vocal, group of grass-roots activists opposed to Georgia's electronic voting machines. They had supported legislation that would outfit the machines with the receipts to increase ballot integrity. Cox, however, was able to successfully snuff those legislative efforts.