News and views, culled and edited from my online eJournal (www.dangillmor.com/blog):

VOTING RIGHTS: A decision last week by California's chief voting official in favor of honest ballot counting was more than an acknowledgment of some well-founded worries about the reliability of electronic voting machines. It was a huge victory for the cause of safe voting.

In requiring paper printouts for voter verification and recounts, as well as more stringent rules for auditing the black-box software the voting machine companies put into their devices, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley was doing the safe thing. He had plainly listened to the real experts the computer scientists who understand technology and its flaws. He didn't necessarily buy their fears, but he understood the consequences if they turn out to be right.

Shelley stood up to the feckless, even reckless, local voting officials and lobbyists for the machine makers. Their determination to put into place voting systems that could not be verified was a mockery of democracy.

He should have required the changes by next year, not 2006 as he did. But this is more than half a loaf for safer, verifiable voting, and it deserves celebration.

California's requirement will reverberate nationwide. The electronic voting machine makers will have to revise their technology in ways that other jurisdictions can take advantage of and safe-voting activists will have every right to demand that they do.

California should take the next step: Require that proprietary software in these black-box voting machines be replaced by open-source software that can be examined for flaws by the larger security-minded community. In today's climate, where business interests rule over the public interest, that may take a while.

We'll be hearing sob stories in coming days and weeks from local voting officials, meanwhile, who insist that Shelley is adding cost and other burdens at a time when we can't afford even basics in government. What's more basic in a democracy than a verified vote?

Shelley's decision was a landmark. Here's a toast to his wisdom, and his leadership.