As usual, Brad Blog is the leading source of info on election integrity issues. John Bonifaz was a guest blogger today, and he makes some good points about the Holt bill that was introduced today. Long story short...it needs work. It's not ready for prime time. PFAW endorses it, but I can't agree as long as the bill says DREs with paper trails are good enough. I don't like the touch screens. I want paper ballots. It's ok with me if they're scanned, but they need to be available for recount. Those cash register rolls on the DREs are not ballots.

Here’s the bottom line: The DRE technology is fundamentally flawed for recording and counting our votes. The Holt bill, unless amended, will further codify into law the use of this technology, piling onto the disaster of HAVA (the Help America Vote Act of 2002) a new disaster.

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We can and we should press for the principled position here: an amendment to the Holt bill that would ban the continued use of DREs and require a real paper ballot. Otherwise, we're going to wake up in 2008 realizing the new disaster we helped to create.