Pennsylvania has been scrambling to organize purchases of a new generation of voting machines but questions about the process abound. Now important news is coming on this front from an article at the local The Citizen’s Voice by Eric Mark:

It looks like Luzerne County voters will not use new voting machines until next year, thanks in part to uncertainties over state funding.

Also, it is not clear when officials will release information about investigations into county elections director Marisa Crispell’s ties to county vendor Election Systems & Software — one of the prospective vendors for the new machines.

The county plans to purchase an electronic voting system that provides added security via a “paper trail” for each vote cast, to comply with a directive state officials issued last year.

When county officials first discussed the planned purchase, with an estimated price tag of $4 million, they said the new machines might be in place for this year’s November election.

See the full article at The Citizen’s Voice. The backlash against voting machines without a paper trial is underway as more are demanding the use of paper ballots across the country. The continued use of voting machines without a paper trial is recognized as a big mistake from a security standpoint, as outlined in a great explanatory page on the website of the nonprofit fair election advocacy group, the Verified Voting Foundation:

The most important aspect of a voting system, with respect to accuracy, integrity and security, is whether or not it is independently auditable. That is, the very prerequisite to accuracy, integrity and security in today’s voting technology is that there be a voter-marked paper ballot, or at least a voter-verifiable paper audit trail, for every vote cast. This ensures that election officials will have something they can use to confirm whether or not the electronic tallies produced by the voting system accurately reflected the intention of the voters.

Be sure to also check out the Democracy Chronicles Election Technology section and our articles on Technology Dissidents, the Internet and Democracy or Voting Machines.