Voting Machine Mess Can’t Just Be Fixed by Congressional Bills

• By Norman Ornstein
• Nov. 26, 2007, Midnight

One of the issues left hanging as Congress is off on recess is the Holt bill to require voter-verifiable paper trails on all voting machines. Despite a robust number of co-sponsors, the bill remains mired in controversy, in part because of the opposition of sizable numbers of election officials who, after having sunk a bundle of money into touch-screen machines after the passage of the Help America Vote Act, are not inclined to change (and are also worried about deadlines and technical glitches).