Tom Udall: “Mr. Speaker, I hope that that is very clear to everyone out there. It was very clear to me the way that was explained.…”

“Mr. Speaker, I hope that that is very clear to everyone out there. It was very clear to me the way that was explained. And I want to say that the reason we are here today on the floor is because we believe in the improved use of technology. Computerized voting systems will soon become the primary method for voting across the country, and with this new technology comes a potentially serious problem: The fact that these systems will not have a verifiable paper trail of how a citizen actually voted. Without this component, voters and election officials have no certainty that votes have been properly recorded, because computer voting machines are not currently required to produce a voter-verified paper trail. Any errors or irregularities they cause are difficult or even impossible to discover. Voters would never know and election officials could never determine whether a faulty machine erroneously recorded the voter's intent. A growing host of nationally and internationally renowned computer scientists consider a voter-verified paper trail to be a critical safeguard for the accuracy, integrity, and security of computer assisted elections. Thankfully my colleague the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) has introduced H.R. 2239 to address this problem.”