Potholes on the Iowa Paper Trail

Jerry Depew, Laurens, IA / http://iowavoters.org / Aug. 6, 2006

Several Iowa counties once planned to use paper trails as part of their touchscreen voting equipment even though not required to do so by Iowa law. But in the June primary they did not use the printers. A map at the SoS website shows nine counties that announced plans to use a paper trail. Now a survey of auditors by Iowans for Voting Integrity reveals that only Black Hawk (Waterloo) and Story (Ames) counties actually used the printers. (Linn county did not respond to the inquiry.)

Monona, Audubon, Boone, and Henry counties purchased Diebold printers but never used them. Des Moines county never purchased printers in spite of the map’s indication that they did. Johnson (Iowa City) county was unable to purchase the printers it wanted because vendor E S & S never presented its printer to Iowa for certification.