KNS: Voting machines may get replaced [1]

The proposed "Tennessee Voter Confidence Act" calls for replacing the "touch screen" voting machines used in Knox County and 92 others with the new paper-trail devices by "no later than" the 2010 elections.

This is great news, and you can read the article for the details.

There is a glaring inaccuracy, though, in the first paragraph that is repeated several times throughout the article regarding "touch screen" systems. Knox County does NOT use "touch screen" voting machines.

In fact, a recent TACIR report [2] on Tennessee election systems says that all 95 counties in Tennessee use electronic voting in some form. Two use optical scan systems (one by Diebold, one by ES&S), 17 use touch screen DRE systems (by Diebold and ES&S), and the rest (the vast majority) use pushbutton DRE systems (by Hart and Microvote).

So in fact, only 17 counties use "touch screen" systems and Knox County is not one of them, nor is Blount County. The rest (78 counties) use a more reliable system. Knox and Blount counties both use the Hart system.

But all of these need to be replaced with optical scan ballots, which can be read by humans for audits and in the case of recounts or machine failures.