Decatur may test a paper trail for voting
 
 
 
 
By DICK PETTYS The Bainbridge Post-Searchlight   September 23, 2005 
 
Atlanta (AP)?Georgia's touch-screen voting machines would be equipped to produce a paper trail to let voters verify their votes under legislation proposed Tuesday by a Republican state senator hoping to become the state's top election official.

Sen. Bill Stephens, R-Canton, an announced candidate for Secretary of State in 2006, said he will pre-file legislation in November requiring the state to conduct a pilot test of paper printouts for voters in three counties in next year's election.

The three counties to be outfitted with printers in the 2006 test would be Cobb and Columbia, both rich in Republican votes, and Decatur, home of the current Secretary of State, Cathy Cox. Cox is a Democratic candidate who will oppose Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue next year.

A statewide rollout would be expected in 2008.

House Speaker Glenn Richardson, R-Hiram, and Senate President Pro-Tem Eric Johnson of Savannah support the measure, their offices said.

The state switched to an all-electronic voting system in 2002 in the aftermath of the Florida election debacle, which delayed for weeks the outcome of the 2000 presidential election.

Georgia previously relied on a hodgepodge system that employed punch cards in some counties, optical scan machines in others and paper ballots in a few.

Stephens said that requiring the state to produce paper copies of each vote would ?give voters confidence and faith in the elections process.''

For a majority of voters, however, that's already the case, according to an exit poll conducted for AP and television networks during the 2004 presidential election. The poll showed that about nine out of 10 Georgia voters were confident their votes were accurately counted.

?They're easy to use,'' Stephens said of the machines, ?but there's no safety net that guarantees there's not the possibility of fraud there.''

Under his proposal, voters would be allowed to review the paper printout before casting their votes electronically, but would not get to keep the paper product. Instead, the printout would be stored by elections officials and would be used only in recounts.

The pilot test would cost about $1 million, which would be covered by the state, he said.

Cox, who previously has urged a go-slow approach to paper ballots and was once quoted as saying ?it really adds nothing to the system,?' said Tuesday she supports retrofitting the system to produce printouts.

?We are proactively 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,? she said.

Her spokesman, Chris Riggall, said Cox has wanted federal standards in place before the state committed to a specific printing system. ?We're soon about to have them,? he said.

Cox credits the electronic voting system with drastically improving the accuracy of the Georgia vote count.

A study by her office showed the statewide percentage of ballots in which voters failed to express a choice for president ped from 3.5 percent in 2000 to 0.39 percent in 2004.

The machines remind voters when they fail to vote in a particular race and give them a chance to change their minds before they cast their ballot.