Palm Beach County panel recommends paper trail for elections

After dozens of hours of meetings over eight months, Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson's technology advisory committee recommended Thursday that he do what he promised when he sought the job of running Palm Beach County elections; pursue some kind of paper ballots or printers to go along with touch-screen voting machines.

The Election Technology Advisory Committee acknowledged Anderson doesn't have that power and the committee didn't spell out whether that means printers to attach to the existing touch-screen, electronic voting machines or scrapping the equipment in favor of paper ballots that would be tallied by optical-scanning devices.

Still, it's one of the more specific and far-reaching recommendations.

The paper-trail recommendation was hailed by U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton. Wexler has been the leading critic of the touch-screen system and was Anderson's most prominent backer in the 2004 election that put him in office

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-pelections12may12,0,4455646.story?coll=sfla-news-palm