Paper trail would erase doubts about voting machines

Marietta Daily Journal   September 26, 2005

The issue of creating a paper trail for Georgia voters has waxed and waned since electronic balloting was introduced statewide in 2002, two years after Florida's fiasco of hanging chads, butterfly ballots and the unforgettable drawn-out suspense in the presidential election, finally concluded by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now suddenly in the lead-up to another election, support for paper ballot receipts is coming from all sides in Georgia.

State Sen. Bill Stephens (R-Canton), an announced candidate for secretary of state in 2006 and member of the Republican power structure, plans to pre-file a bill in November to require a pilot test of paper printouts for voters in three counties next year.

Stephens says the paper trail will "give voters confidence and faith in the elections process." His legislation would mandate paper printouts for voters to review before casting ballots electronically. The printout would be stored by elections officials to be used only in recounts.

Lining up behind the proposal are Republican heavy hitters House Speaker Glenn Richardson of Hiram and Senate President Pro-Tem Eric Johnson of Savannah.

The three pilot counties would be Cobb, Columbia and Decatur, the latter being the home of current Secretary of State Cathy Cox, a Democrat who is going after Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue's job next year.

Ms. Cox until last week opposed the paper trail, contending the system she put in place three years ago had ample safeguards against fraud. However, on Tuesday she came out in favor of retrofitting the system to product printouts.

Options are being explored, she said, "to modify Georgia's voting system to provide a voter-verified paper trail that gives voters even more confidence in our voting process."

The reason for not acting sooner, her spokesman said, was to wait for federal standards to be effected before committing to a printing system.

To Secretary Cox's credit, the statewide electronic voting system has worked wonders in accurately tallying the vote in Georgia. An important feature is the prompting by the machine when a voter fails to vote in a particular race. Thus, a survey by Cox's office showed only 39 percent of voters failed to express a choice for president in 2004 versus 3.5 percent in 2000.

Given the support already garnered by the Stephens paper trail bill, the General Assembly can be expected to approve the legislation in the 2006 session. The effective date for vote printouts would be 2008.

Clearly this is the prudent thing to do. It should alleviate doubts about the accuracy of the electronic voting system and insure there is no fraud in the voting process itself.