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PRO (YES)
Kay Maxwell, President of the League of Women Voters of the United States, in her testimony before the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on May 5, 2004 stated:
"Under HAVA, there must be a paper record of each vote from a DRE voting system. In well-run systems, the printouts with vote totals are taken throughout Election Day and compared to the total number of votes cast at the machine, to ensure security. The paper records then provide a backup for official tabulations of election results. In addition to vote totals, DREs can print out each individual ballot (without identifying the voter) to provide an additional security and audit capacity. Not only can this data be printed, it is saved electronically in multiple formats in multiple locations, so that if one mechanism fails, the information is backed up using another format in another location. In other words, DREs in well-administered systems provide a substantial audit capacity for purposes of recounts and authentication."
5/5/2004 Kay Maxwell 
Neil McClure, Vice President and Strategic Technical Officer of electronic voting machine manufacturer Hart InterCivic, Inc., stated in his May 5, 2004 testimony before the U.S. Election Assistance Commission:
"One of the claims of the paper ballot receipt proponents is that there is nothing to recount when using DREs. However, they are applying a paper concept to an electronic device. If we look at the purpose of a recount, it is to validate and verify the outcome of an election... A recount is much more than running the paper back through the counting machine; it involves an audit of the entire elections process...
The complaint about DREs is that if a recount is done, the exact same result is reported. But that's the point! If the same result is not reported, then there is a problem. For example, if the much discussed Trojan Horse has worked its malicious magic during a specific time window on Election Day, then an electronic recount in which data is freshly read and tabulated WILL reveal a problem."
5/5/2004 Neil McClure
The Election Technology Council produced a pamphlet titled "Separating Myths From Reality," which is available on their website (accessed 5/25/2006) and states:
"In the event a recount is necessary, electronic voting machines provide the most accurate and verifiable measure of voter intent of any system currently employed in U.S. elections. DRE systems have multiple redundant features to capture and store votes accurately. For example, in a recount, electronic voting machines allow election officials to print a paper image of each voter-verified screen for manual tabulation. Conversely, traditional lever machines only offer an unverifiable total number of votes cast for each candidate. The paper ballot is open to varied interpretations of voter intent and other problems such as ballot box stuffing and under and over counts. And we are all too familiar with the problems of punch card systems that clouded the 2000 Presidential election results."
5/25/2006 Election Technology Council
Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S) includes a "Frequently Asked Questions" section on their website (accessed 5/25/2006) which states:
"The iVotronic [a model of electronic voting machine] allows for a printed and documented record of precinct-level election activity to verify results. If an election is ever contested, the iVotronic's unique, patented recount system allows replication of the entire election process, including production of all ballot images for re-verification. Beyond that, the iVotronic has three independent but redundant memory chips to ensure that no votes will ever be lost or altered. Accuracy of the system can be verified for each terminal through current electronic ballot records already stored within the terminals."
5/25/2006 ES&S
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CON (NO)
Ellen Theisen, CEO of the Vote-PAD Company, writes in her 2005 report Myth Breakers: Facts About Electronic Elections:
"While HAVA requires that all voting systems produce a paper record in order to provide a manual audit capacity, the paper record of a DRE is interpreted by voting machine vendors and some election officials to refer to an end-of-day printout of either the totals or the ballot images...
Computer experts point out that if a DRE makes errors in recording or storing votes, its end-of-day printouts will be incorrect and no meaningful audit can be done. When a machine produces results a second time, it's merely a reprint, not a recount."
2005 Ellen Theisen
Doug Jones, Ph.D., in "The Evaluation of Voting Technology," a chapter in the book Secure Electronic Voting (2003), writes:
"For over a decade, all direct-recording electronic machines have been required to contain redundant storage, but this redundant storage is not an independent record of the votes, because it is created by the same software that created the original record. As a result, recounts are of limited use with these machines."
2003 Doug Jones
Tova Andrea Wang, Executive Director of the Century Foundation's Post-2004 Election Reform Working Group, writes in her article "Understanding the Debate Over Electronic Voting Machines," published on the organization's website on May 26, 2004:
"Most DRE machines do not provide an independent record of each individual ballot that can be used in a recount to check the machine for error or tampering. It is impossible to check if the voting machine records a vote in its memory different than the one the voter cast. When someone votes using a punch card ballot or an optical scan machine, those ballots are saved and can be counted if an election is called into question. The paper ballots can be compared to the machine vote. DRE machines do not provide that capability."
5/26/2004 Tova Andrea Wang
A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections (ACCURATE) submitted their "Public Comment on the 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines" to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on September 30, 2005, which states:
"In today's purely electronic systems, there is no 'fixed record' for voters to review, or for officials to review as a check against the system or in the case of a recount. If votes were incorrectly recorded by the system there is no possibility of a meaningful recount."
9/30/2005 ACCURATE
Paul Boutin, former Senior Editor of Wired magazine, writes in his June 2004 article "Is E-Voting Safe?":
"There's no way for a voter to know what the machine records when they cast their vote and no voter-verified physical record available for recounts. If the software goes awry or is tricked into flipping votes, no one will be able to tell as long as the total ballot count stays the same."
June 2004 Paul Boutin
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