Vote no - Credit: pkeleher on Flickr (CC BY)
Maryland and Virginia are planning on phasing out touchscreen voting in favor of the traditional paper ballot.
Maryland’s approach, as The Washington Post reports, will be the most drastic: The Old Line State will mothball a $65 million electronic voting system—on which taxpayers will still be making payments until 2014—and employ paper ballots for the 2010 midterm election. Former Governor Robert Erlich had called for a return to paper back in 2006, in the wake of endemic problems at the polls—some technical, some attributable to poll workers’ confusion about how to operate the machines. The switch back to paper could cost as much as another $40 million over three years.
Virginia will phase the machines out gradually, pursuant to HB 2707, which the state legislature passed last year. The law bars the purchase of new direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines, and it requires localities to abandon them over time as they wear out. The law was originally to have taken effect last July, but implementation was delayed after the state’s Electoral Board Association asked Governor Tim Kaine to give officials another year to prepare.
I’m not sure if this is the best thing, but moving away from the current systems is definitely a good plan.