A panel studying ways to improve Colorado’s election system has recommended that the state get rid of electronic voting machines and move to an all-paper system by 2014.
Larimer County Clerk Scott Doyle, chairman of the technology subcommittee of the state’s Election Reform Commission, said studies have raised questions about the machines’ reliability.
“Pre-eminent computer scientists have come to a scientific consensus that the (e-voting) technology is a bad idea,” elections attorney Paul Hultin, another subcommittee member, said at an Election Reform Commission meeting Tuesday.
As a concession to county clerks who favor e-voting, the committee’s recommendation would allow counties to continue using their current electronic voting machines through the 2013 elections and would waive a requirement set to take effect next year to mandate all e-voting machines have a paper trail voters can see.
Former state Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, chairman of the commission, said the compromise would give clerks certainty over the next several years about what machines they can use. A law passed last year to provide a one-time fix to voting machine certification is set to expire this summer.
“As far as I’m concerned, this compromise is very sensitive to the clerks of Colorado,” Gordon said. “And if there are problems that are unforeseen, we’ve got four legislative years to take a shot at them.”
The full panel may vote next week on the recommendation, along with others from three subcommittees.
But the all-paper recommendation is likely to revive a debate from last year over the accuracy of e-voting machines — also known as direct recording electronic machines, or DREs — and the state’s authority to tell clerks how to run elections. Clerks last year successfully beat back a bill mandating all-paper elections in 2008.
A number of commission members Tuesday defended e-voting.
“I could not sleep at night if I did not think they were working properly and accurately counting votes,” said Bent County Clerk Patti Nickell, whose county uses e-voting machines. “I feel we should just continue as we are doing and let (clerks) choose the extent to which we use DREs or paper.”
