Although many people talk about technology leading us to a "paperless" society, freshman state Sen. Bob Onder wants to make sure our elections have plenty of paper.
"Senate Bill 399 would establish the paper ballot, hand-marked by the voter, as the official ballot in elections in our state," Onder, R-Lake St. Louis, told the Senate's Financial & Governmental Organizations and Elections Committee Monday afternoon.
"It would continue the use of direct-record electronic voting machines, or DREs, for disabled voters, until such time as (the machines) needed to be replaced - at which time they would be replaced with hand-mark machines to assist those voters."
He's not trying to go all the way back to paper-only elections, Onder said in an interview.
Rather, he favors the optical scanner machines like Cole, Boone and other Mid-Missouri counties use, where the voter fills in an arrow or a circle to mark each election choice - and then the machine reads and counts the votes.
That "provides a paper trail that can be audited or recounted," he told the News Tribune, "to ensure the integrity of our elections."
Even punch cards provide a better voting option than the touch-screen DREs, he said in the interview.
"Optical scanners are really the gold-standard, that provides a very efficient reading of electoral results," Onder said.
He reminded the committee of the number of major U.S. companies, including "Anthem-Blue Cross, SONY, Home Depot, J.P. Morgan-Chase, e-bay and Target have had data breaches that have compromised the personal data of hundreds of millions of Americans. If hackers can get around the security of J.P. Morgan and e-bay, how long will it be before they can electronically manipulate and steal our elections?"
The direct-record machines are supposed to have a paper tape that provides a method of tracking what each voter did, so that recounts can be achieved when necessary, he said.
But Onder pointed to last fall's St. Louis County executive's race, where Republican Rick Stream asked for a recount after narrowly losing to Democrat Steve Stenger.
"There essentially was no recount," Onder reported, "because the paper tapes in the DREs were found to be too cumbersome to interpret - and, often, were missing because of jams."
No one testified against Onder's bill, but a half-dozen people supported it.
Cynthia Richards of the group Missourians for Honest Elections told the committee that DRE machines "are more costly to use than paper ballots and they slow down the lines at the polls."
Laura Hausladen testified that, of Missouri's 116 separate voting authorities - 112 county clerks' offices and the election boards in St. Louis City and County and in Kansas City and Jackson County - only four would be affected immediately if Onder's bill becomes law, "and they, in the long run, would be the ones to see most cost-savings."
The four - St. Louis City and Kansas City, and St. Louis and Johnson counties - "currently use DREs for a significant portion of the voting population, not just the handicapped," she said.
And, Hausladen added: "Since nearly 25 percent of the votes cast in Missouri come from voting jurisdictions that are, in reality, unauditable, all Missourians are affected during any kind of statewide vote - even when their own election officials have ensured that their votes are auditable and recountable."
David W. Guest, who identified himself as a "semi-retired IT professional," told the committee he's helped with some St. Louis County's elections and was "alarmed when I saw the potential for fraud in these machines."
Several testified that the DRE machines require extra technical help on election days.
Richards said after each election, her group reviews the tech logs, which "have shown us that voting in major elections in St. Louis County is, always, interrupted by numerous DRE problems - many of them serious. ... These aren't glitches."
Last year the Senate passed a similar bill by a 22-11 margin - but the House never debated or voted on it.
The committee took no action Monday on Onder's bill.