The mission of the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition is to restore public ownership and oversight of elections, and to ensure the fundamental right of every American citizen to vote and to have each vote counted as intended in a secure, transparent, impartial, and independently verified election process.
Panel Backs Guideline Favoring Voting-Machine Verification
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 12/05/2006 - 11:30pm
By Cameron W. Barr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 6, 2006; A09
A federal panel voted yesterday to begin developing a national standard that could result in the gradual phasing out of the paperless electronic voting machines in use across the Washington region and in many parts of the country.
The "next generation" of voting systems should have an independent means of verifying election results, the Technical Guidelines Development Committee said. The standard would have to be adopted by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
"This seems to mark the end of an era" for paperless electronic voting, said Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org, a nonpartisan organization that tracks changes in the country's election systems.
The commission and its advisory panel have yet to determine when the new standard would go into effect and how it would apply. A report prepared by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology last week said the new standard would not be implemented until 2009 at the earliest.
Some politicians indicated yesterday that they would move more quickly to add verification systems -- also known as paper trails -- to voting systems that lack them.
VIDEO: “Protecting Your Vote”
