X

Voters league backtracks on e-voting

The League of Women Voters drops its endorsement of electronic voting machines that lack a paper audit trail.

Declan McCullagh Former Senior Writer
Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. You can e-mail him or follow him on Twitter as declanm. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.
Declan McCullagh

The League of Women Voters has dropped its endorsement of electronic voting machines that lack a paper audit trail. Such machines are now considered vulnerable to hackers or software glitches. At a convention this week in Washington, D.C., league delegates voted for a resolution backing "voting systems and procedures that are secure, accurate, recountable and accessible."

The vote is a rebuke to the national leadership of the 130,000-member organization, who had dismissed the ="5216643">possible security threat and touted paperless voting machines as an improvement over punched card devices. Some of its more tech-savvy members had been pressing for the league to change its position, arguing that a paper trail was necessary for accurate recounts.