| Sumario: | Concerns about the reliability of touch-screen voting are gathering momentum since these machines became the most popular balloting methods following the controversial 2000 presidential election. Critics of electronic voting refer to recent controversies, such as malfunctioning machines in a Republican primary contest in Ohio in November 2007, as evidence that changes in procedures made earlier this decade were insufficient. Advocates of further changes want to see new machines produce a paper trail that can be used as backup to electronically reported results. State and local officials, however, are complaining about the prospect of having to purchase more new equipment with little guarantee of federal financial assistance. They have support from an unlikely source—an alliance of voting machine makers, who are anxious to stop provisions in Congressional bills that would require disclosure of secret source codes and leave them open to hackers as well as competitors.
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