http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/12599389.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp Election paper-trail bill should be vetoed ANY BALLOT-VERIFICATION SYSTEM MUST INCLUDE THE DISABLED By Bruce McPherson As California's secretary of state, I see my top priority as ensuring voter confidence and the integrity of each vote. State law requires that after an election, officials randomly select and manually recount 1 percent of the ballots cast, as a check against voting machine malfunction and fraud. At issue is how to gather the voting records used for verification. A Mercury News editorial Aug. 31 endorsed a bill, SB 370, that would require the sample recounts to use the paper printouts generated by electronic voting machines. This bill is flawed and should be vetoed by the governor. It creates major technical and legal flaws that must be resolved before becoming law. My biggest objection in using the paper trail to check voting machine performance is that it denies many in the disabled community the ability to have the same level of confidence in the process that all other voters enjoy. Current technology only provides an audible method of verifying votes for visually disadvantaged voters who cast ballots on a computer screen. I have heard from several members of the disabled community who are very troubled because there is no such review for the paper trail, leaving this community out of the process. Before we hastily start treating the paper trail as a secondary ballot, we need to explore other, more inclusive avenues to reach the goal of voting verification. I am working with other states' election officials on a national research and development effort to develop voting technology that assures independence and secrecy of the vote for disabled citizens. Using paper receipts as secondary ballots at this point is too risky. They are designed for the voter's review and are not printed on ballot-quality paper and might not retain their quality during the often-lengthy recount and legal challenge periods. Additionally, to ensure voter confidence in California's elections, manual recounts and paper audit trails should not be the only ways of verifying the accuracy of vote tallies. Therefore, I have directed my staff to conduct parallel monitoring programs on Election Day in which we randomly select ``live'' voting machines, take them out of production, cast predetermined voting scripts on them, and check them against the totals produced by the machines. Consistent with this view, I am urging the governor to sign AB 1636, because it would increase voting system security and improve the integrity of the vote in this new age of electronic voting. I will work with the Legislature, county registrars, the disabled community, and other interested persons to identify a more comprehensive solution for electronic voting system verification. We should adopt performance standards for this accessible, voter-verified paper audit trail before attempting to use it as the tool for building trust and proving accuracy of electronic voting systems. We have the opportunity now, for the first time, to develop standards that provide county election officials the best, most consistent methods for conducting the audits of voting required by law. My primary goal is to ensure that California's elections include all voters, and to demonstrate that the votes are accurately and efficiently counted in a way that ensures privacy. In this 40th anniversary year of the Voting Rights Act, I am dedicated to upholding these basic voting tenets. BRUCE MCPHERSON is California's secretary of state.