If they can give you a slip of paper verifying an electronic transaction from an ATM machine, then they can give you a piece of paper verifying your vote. This isn’t rocket science, folks. Putting paper trails on electronic voting machines is a no-brainer to me. Just take a look at what’s going on in Florida:
But scrutiny is focused on Sarasota County, where touch-screen voting machines recorded that 18,382 people — 13 percent of voters in the Nov. 7 election — did not vote for either Republican Vern Buchanan or Democrat Christine Jennings, despite casting ballots in other races on the ballot. That rate was much higher than other counties in the district.
With paper trails, as proposed by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), this kind of thing wouldn’t happen. Lest you think the problem only exists in Florida:
Holt also said at least one electronic voting machine in New Jersey’s Ocean County counted votes twice, and some were also added to vote totals for the Senate, county freeholder and county sheriff races in Lakewood, according to a published report.
HR550 is on track.
Holt’s “Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act” had the support of 219 House members before last week’s election and now has 221 bipartisan co-sponsors, his office said.
The bill would require that all voting systems produce a voter-verified paper record for use in manual audits; ban the use of undisclosed software and all wireless and concealed communications devises in voting systems; and establish procedures to be followed if there is a discrepancy between reported results and audit results.
Let’s get this thing done. Contact your representatives and urge their support of HR550.
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VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
MB: Did you know that you can sign up for the Automatic Payment System in the Treasurer’s office, whereby your bank account or Discover credit card gets debited on each due date for your car tax, real estate tax, and/or water bills? All you have to do is make sure that you have the funds available on the due date. The Treasurer does the rest. You will never have to deal with late payment penalties nor USPS again. We try to make paying tax a painless activity… 🙂
Now *that* is excellent gov’t service, ladies and gents. 🙂 This is why we’re going to push this woman into higher office!
(I am actually doing that, Ingrid, to avoid the burning shame of ever having to go into the desk again and saying – uh, I’d like to pay my water bill. We didn’t get it! Really!)
Now, if you lived in Norfolk, there’d be no such option. 😦