FLORIDA VOTERS TO GET PAPER BALLOTS IN 2008; TOUCH SCREENS HEADED FOR
EXTINCTION
FLORIDA VOTERS COALITION - The Florida House unanimously passed a bill,
already passed in the Senate, that provides almost all voters paper
ballots in time for the 2008 Presidential election, and bans paperless
DREs outright by 2012. The bill now goes to the Governor where he's sure
to sign it since it's his initiative. Counties will have the option to
pitch DREs immediately and provide ballot marking devices for voters
with disabilities. . . The bill is funded with $27.9 million in HAVA
funds and there's plenty more money in that account should more be
needed next year. Counties will get help from the state to purchase
optical scan equipment to count the paper ballots; ballot-on-demand
equipment to ease paper congestion problems in early voting; and ballot
marking devices to serve the disabled.
While there was talk earlier in the legislative session about
retrofitting printers to failed touchscreen DREs, that talk faded as
legislators saw it would be throwing good money after bad. The Florida
bill also contains new audit provisions essential to the security of
paper ballot voting systems. There was agreement among legislators that
the new audit provisions will need further tweaking next year before
becoming effective in July 2008. For now, the language requires that
after every election, at least 1% and not more than 2% of randomly
selected precincts be audited by hand-counting the paper ballots in one
randomly selected race. The audit will take place after certification
and be reported 3 days before the contest period ends.
http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/GoAllTheWayFlorida_
FloridaMovesToPaperBallots_050307.pdf
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
EXTINCTION
FLORIDA VOTERS COALITION - The Florida House unanimously passed a bill,
already passed in the Senate, that provides almost all voters paper
ballots in time for the 2008 Presidential election, and bans paperless
DREs outright by 2012. The bill now goes to the Governor where he's sure
to sign it since it's his initiative. Counties will have the option to
pitch DREs immediately and provide ballot marking devices for voters
with disabilities. . . The bill is funded with $27.9 million in HAVA
funds and there's plenty more money in that account should more be
needed next year. Counties will get help from the state to purchase
optical scan equipment to count the paper ballots; ballot-on-demand
equipment to ease paper congestion problems in early voting; and ballot
marking devices to serve the disabled.
While there was talk earlier in the legislative session about
retrofitting printers to failed touchscreen DREs, that talk faded as
legislators saw it would be throwing good money after bad. The Florida
bill also contains new audit provisions essential to the security of
paper ballot voting systems. There was agreement among legislators that
the new audit provisions will need further tweaking next year before
becoming effective in July 2008. For now, the language requires that
after every election, at least 1% and not more than 2% of randomly
selected precincts be audited by hand-counting the paper ballots in one
randomly selected race. The audit will take place after certification
and be reported 3 days before the contest period ends.
http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/GoAllTheWayFlorida_
FloridaMovesToPaperBallots_050307.pdf
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
No comments:
Post a Comment