Election Reform

The Senate State Government committee met yesterday to consider 21 bills dealing with election reform. That's a record number of bills, but really, most of those were consolidated with Senate Committee substitutes into 12 bills, one of which (no-fault absentee ballots) was held. Included in the bills that we passed out of committee was the bill to mandate the use of a voter-verified paper trail in all voting machines. Most of NJ uses the Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machine which is essentially a big sandwich board with a piece of paper taped onto it that lists the candidates.

In my opinion, the federal government was too slow to issue guidelines for voting machine design and security. The federal Election Assistance Commission is now examining a draft version of recommendations, 3 years after HAVA (the Help America Vote Act) was passed, and only six months before new voting machines have to be in place in the areas that accepted HAVA money.