Florida's Secretary of State Glenda Hood does not favor paper trails for touch screen voters and even though they may be available, says they will be optional only.

Paper trails are essential as a safeguard to the system. As EFF says, your vote counts, but only if its counted.

Check out this New York Times editorial today on the subject:

Too many elections teeter on a few hundred votes, and candidates rightly expect human beings to be able to double-check the results. America's election apparatus needs to move firmly and quickly into the computer age. But the public must feel secure that each vote is really counted. At this stage, a voter-verified paper trail offers the public that necessary security .

Alarming summaries of independent research by Johns Hopkins and Rice University, MIT, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and even Congress echo critics' concerns. Here are some links to get you up to speed on the issue.

http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/20030724_evote_research_report.pdf

http://www.vote.caltech.edu/Reports/

http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/20030723_eff_pr.php

http://www.epic.org/privacy/voting/crsreport.pdf

The full extent of the threat to our electoral process has been documented in Beverly Harris's explosive expose, "Black Box Voting", which can be downloaded free of charge here [thanks to Eric Smith, a journalist and IT instructor in Tokyo, for the links].