Reply #5: House defeats paper ballot funding

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By Michael Hardy
Published on July 21, 2008

The House rejected a bill last week that would have funded the purchase of paper ballots as a backup to electronic voting systems for the upcoming election.

The bill would have directed the Election Assistance Commission to establish a program to make the grants in time for the November vote.

Aviel Rubin, a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland and longtime skeptic of electronic voting, said he was disappointed by the House.

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Proponents say the machines are fast, accurate, and easy to set up for disabled and non-English speaking voters. Critics, however, say the machines can be inaccurate and are subject to technical problems. Touch-screen machines in particular have caused concern because some models do not provide a paper record of votes that could be used if a manual recount is required.

Federal Computer Week