Panel sees more uniform voting in N.C.

New study group hears voters demanding a better paper trail

MARK JOHNSON    Charlotte Enquirer   02 December 2004

RALEIGH - Leaders of a new special General Assembly committee on electronic voting reform said Wednesday that their work likely will lead to some degree of centralized voting systems, to a more limited variety of voting machines and possibly to paper receipts for voters.

The 13-member group, made up of state and local officials and election experts, is tasked with proposing solutions to vote-counting blunders and controversies in several counties and races across the state this year.

"Our mission is to establish a system that the public can have confidence is reliable, fair and accountable," said N.C. Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, D-Orange, and one of the chairs.

Kinnaird and the other three co-chairs emphasized that no decisions have been made, but voters who have contacted them have overwhelmingly asked for a paper record of their ballots.

"There needs to be some kind of a paper trail," said House Speaker Jim Black, a Matthews Democrat, who helped create the committee.

The committee co-chairs mentioned Nevada's recent use of electronic voting machines that produced a paper copy of each voter's ballot.

They said the state's need to enforce federal voting standards, which are still in the works, plus the expected need for new voting machines, likely will require greater state control over voting systems. Counties currently have wide latitude, which is why voters encounter a patchwork of at least seven types of voting machines or methods statewide, from paper ballots to touch-screen electronic voting.

"We need to be able to call our state Board of Elections and all be on the same chapter, if not the same page," said Susan Adams, a co-chair and Republican member of the Moore County Board of Elections.

The lawmakers and election leaders want to strike a balance and not push state control too far. They expect the need for more centralization and paper ballots will lead to a limited ion of machines from which counties can choose but probably not a single machine for everybody.

Committee leaders said the tremendous public pressure will assure that the group's final recommendations, unlike many other study committees, will not lie on a shelf. They hope to at least test a new system in some localities in 2005.

They hold their first meeting on Dec. 13 in Raleigh.