NY Times Calls For Ban on Touch-Screen Voting

In an editorial for Thursday's paper, the New York Times has finally called for an all-out ban on touch-screen voting machines.

Writing that "electronic voting has been an abysmal failure," the newspaper of record --- which has been an abysmal failure, overall, in investigating and reporting on election-related issues over the past many years --- opines in favor of the flawed Rush Holt Election Reform Bill, though aptly declares that "The bill lacks one important thing: a ban on touch-screen voting machines."

They add that "there is still time before the bill becomes law to add a ban on touch-screen voting" and that scheduling such changes for 2012 is "too long to wait."

Here are the grafs that the Times gets almost exactly right [emphasis ours]:

It is unfortunate that the bill does not contain a provision banning the use of touch-screen voting machines. A touch-screen ban would encourage states to use optical scan machines, which rely on paper ballots read by a computer, like a standardized test form. Optical scans are less expensive and less vulnerable to vote theft.

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There is still time before the bill becomes law to add a ban on touch-screen voting. If the House fails to do so, the Senate should, and it should fight for it to be in the final bill.

There has been a spirited debate about how quickly to require reforms to be implemented. There have been calls for putting a solution off until 2012. That is too long to wait.

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but what took you so long, New York Times? But never mind that. The question now is: What is taking Congress --- specifically Congressional Democrats --- so long?

It's E-Voting: Game Over. Time to ban DREs once and for all, precisely as The BRAD BLOG has been calling for now for years. Even the NY Times gets it. Finally. So can we now please end this infernal nightmare once and for all?

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