Nevadans to Become First to Use Touchscreen Voting That Produces a Paper Trail

“Nevada residents became the first in the nation to vote on computers that leave a paper trail, taking part in a primary that produced scattered reports of delays — though none of the serious problems that have cast doubt upon electronic voting systems in other states.

A delegation of federal election officials monitored the equipment’s debut Tuesday in the state capital as voters cast ballots for congressional candidates, state legislators, school officials and judges. Results matched expectations.

Scattered reports of problems — including in Nye, Washoe and Pershing counties — delayed vote tabulation, but didn’t throw election results into question.

Officials in Nye County couldn’t read the data on one computer but weren’t overly worried. If they couldn’t tease the results out of the machine — which held an unknown number of votes — they could count paper ballots by hand instead.

“If we can’t ever read it, we’ll use the paper trail as the backup,” said Nye County deputy clerk Laura Zubia, who helped recover the data shortly after midnight. “That’s the whole point of the paper trail, isn’t it?” “