Thursday, July 26, 2007

Senators to abandon '08 e-voting paper trail mandate

Anne Broache reports that

"Democratic senators on Wednesday made another push for banning electronic voting machines that lack paper trails, but they've backed away from doing so in time for next year's presidential election.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chief sponsor of a contentious bill called the Ballot Integrity Act that proposes such changes, said she fears requiring all states to employ so-called voter-verified paper records in their systems, with some primaries only six months away, "could be an invitation to chaos." Earlier this year, she called for enacting such changes by 2008."

This 'it will cause chaos because we haven't got enough time before the next election' argument has been bandied about round the evoting debate for a long time now. The US are always going to be within two years of a major election. The evoting infratructure and the other structural problems with the US electoral system are going to take longer than two years to sort out. Yes it is a major systemic mess that will need major surgery but the ultimate conclusion of the 'it's going to cause chaos' argument is that 'we can't do anything about it so we shouldn't try'.

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