Opposition from Republicans and the White House has sparked defeat of a
Democratic proposal to reimburse state election officials for
converting their electronic voting machines to paper-based systems
ahead of November's election.
The U.S. House of Representatives measure, called the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008,
had been called up for what's known as a "suspension" vote on Tuesday.
That means in order for it to pass, two-thirds of the House would have
had to vote in favor of the bill.
Instead, the bill fell well short of that threshold, garnering a 239-178 vote, with only 16 Republicans voting yes. (Two Democrats voted no.)

Introduced in January by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), the bill was designed to encourage states to use paper-based balloting systems and to audit their results in exchange for federal funding to finance those ventures. But taking
those steps is not mandatory, unlike some previous efforts by Holt and
other politicians to require voter-verified paper records in all
machines by this fall.
It was Congress that encouraged states to switch to electronic
voting machines in the first place, doling out funding through a 2002
law known as the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA for short. But Holt and
other bill sponsors say the law must now be revised "to support
paperless jurisdictions' efforts to invest in voting systems that are
equipped with an independent paper copy of each vote--verified by the
voter him or herself--to serve as a check on any electronic tallies
reported by the voting machines."
"Although these machines are generally easy to use and, if properly
equipped, accessible to voters with disability and language assistance
needs, the 2006 election revealed that these machines suffer from an
essential flaw: the digital results reported from these machines cannot
be audited independently," the bill's sponsors wrote in a report
accompanying the bill.
The bill in question doesn't give a dollar figure for how much states
would be reimbursed, delegating a federal agency known as the Election
Assistance Commission to determine what's "reasonable." But the
Congressional Budget Office estimated its implementation would cost
$685 million in a single year.
Before the vote on Tuesday, House Republicans railed against that
price tag--and said they're not convinced paper is the only solution to
ensuring the integrity of elections.
"I think there are other methods of achieving redundancy," said Rep.
Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), ranking member of the House Committee on
Administration, which oversees election-related legal matters. He added
that "hand counting is not as accurate as almost any machine counting
that I have seen."
The White House also put out a statement (PDF) urging the bill's defeat,
calling it "largely redundant with existing law, and therefore
unnecessary." The White House also argued the bill authorizes
"excessive spending," noting that about $3 billion in federal grants
have been allocated to state election officials since 2002, with more
than $1 billion in unspent funds remaining.
Holt, for his part, attacked the cost-related objections. "I note
that many people who opposed this legislation supported spending almost
$330 million in recent years to provide election assistance in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Pakistan," Holt said in a statement.
"I would have hoped those who supported efforts to export democracy
abroad would be equally committed to strengthening democracy here at
home."
It was not immediately clear what would happen next with the bill.
Even if it had passed the House, it might not have gone any further
this year. On the Senate side, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who
serves as chairman of a committee that oversees election law changes, said last year that she didn't expect any major changes to be required until 2010.