Hightower Lowdown

Trust us, plead the makers of electronic voting machines —our touch-screen systems are state-of-the-art, foolproof marvels!

But—oops—in a couple of recent, high-profile tests, the computers glitched and the makers of the machines had virtual egg all over their faces. First up was Sequoia Voting Systems, which boasts that its machines deliver "nothing less than 100 percent accuracy," held a demonstration of its newest technology for California senate staffers in August.

Imagine Sequoia's 100 percent embarrassment when its machine balked during demonstration votes on a Spanish-language ballot. The testers punched in their votes on the touch screen...but— oops—the machine did not record the votes, apparently having lost them somewhere in cyberspace.

Luckily, this was a test of Sequoia's new system that includes a paper record of every vote—and the paper trail revealed the computer's error, which otherwise would have been undetected, disenfranchising the voter.

The lesson is obvious: These machines must have a paper backup.

You could ask U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski about that. At a festival in her state of Maryland, the public was invited to a try the Diebold electronic voting machines that will count Marylanders' votes this November. The senator was there, gave the machine a whirl, and—oops—it erred! Touching the screen to vote on a sample referendum question, she apparently "brushed" the question below it, and the machine recorded a wrong vote.

Curiously, Diebold and Maryland election officials have refused to allow an independent examination of this flawed demonstration machine, arguing that any such test might undermine "public confidence" in the technology that will count the public's vote in November. Who do they think they're fooling? Not Senator Mikulski —she promptly signed on as a co-sponsor of legislation requiring a paper trail for all electronic votes.