Paperless Voting Is an Accident Waiting to Happen

As they prepare to spend millions of dollars in re-election campaigns, members of Congress should be asking themselves “Do I want to be Christine Jennings?
While various explanations have been offered for the extraordinarily high undervote rate (the undervote rate in other counties in the District, where voters marked paper ballots, was around 2%), none of these explanations can be proven and Ms. Jennings filed a formal election contest with the U.S. House. The task force of the Committee on House Administration investigating the election contest heard last week from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that a further investigation of the machines will take place in November — a full year after the election.

In a recent article, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who serves on the task force, noted that he hopes that the findings of the GAO will eventually allow the task force to finish its review of the 2006 race before Congress gets too much further into the 2008 election cycle, “and finally put to rest for the people of the 13th district of Florida the challenge against Congressman Vern Buchanan.