When Rush Holt first introduced this legislation in May of 2003, a mere handful of states required a paper record for each vote. Now, half of them do, and bills to mandate that security measure are pending in more than a dozen of the remaining states. In September 2005, the Carter Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform issued a recommendation for voter verified paper records, saying:

"Congress should pass a law requiring that all voting machines be equipped with a voter-verifiable paper audit trail and, consistent with HAVA, be fully accessible to voters with disabilities."

Too often, calls for verified voting in the form of paper trails for electronic voting machines get bogged down in conspiracy theories about Ohio and Florida. While there's certainly a need for discussion of election fraud, verified voting really ought to be separated from that, as it's such a simple, sensible, non-controversial issue. Of the 159 cosponsors of the bill, the overwhelming majority are Democrats, but there are Republican supporters as well, such as Jim Ramstad of Minnesota and Tom Cole of Oklahoma, among others. Simply put, this is a no brainer and I can't imagine why anyone would want to stop it.

Today, there's a concerted effort by many in the blogosphere to break the Ney logjam on H.R. 550. DBK at Blue Jersey gives a pretty solid rundown of steps to take to show support for H.R. 550, including a link to a petition to the members of the House Administration Committee. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of petitions, but this one seems like it could do some real good.