Based on my experience as an election official (I currently serve as Secretary on the Electoral Board for the City of Charlottesville), I oppose this legislation in its current form.

First, the legislation is premature. We may be facing new election law mandates through federal legislation, and we don't know what those will look like. We may end up having to rewrite the whole law again next year or in 2009.

Second, this is an unfunded mandate of at least $30 million distributed among Virginia's counties and cities. Most localities invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in new voting equipment over the past five years, equipment with a lifetime of 15-20 years. This legislation says all that new equipment must be discarded and replaced with equipment that was quite likely considered by local Electoral Boards and rejected. (That was certainly the case in Charlottesville.)

Third, this is a solution in search of a problem. In the more than two decades that electronic voting machines have been in use, there has never been a verified case of tampering. Other problems that have arisen invariably turn out to be based on human error -- the machines are not the problem.

I urge our legislators to go slow, be deliberate, and reject HB 2707 and its companion bill, SB 840. This issue can be revisited in the future, if necessary, but now is not the time to rush.

I am currently serving as Registrar for the City of Roanoke and am apposed to this legislation in it's current form.
First it is premature to pass any state legislation this soon, since the Federal government is also looking at passing legislation of it's own. We as a nation have already spent tremendous amounts of time and tax dollars to implement the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which encouraged DRE's as opposed to paper ballots and lever machines which were at the top of the list to replace. Those election reforms stemmed mostly from the 2000 Presidential Election in which we were not sure who won almost up until Jan 2001. Most of the confusion especially in Florida, which caused the most controversy, was over Paper Ballots (misread ballots, missing ballots, ballots received after the deadline in absentee precincts, malfunctioning tabulators, etc., etc.)
Most of us in the Elections community new that laws would be quickly passed without carefully thinking it through and we would be left with the responsiblility of trying to implement all of it by whatever deadlines were imposed on us and by any means necessary. Roanoke City implemented our DRE's in the 2004 Presidential election and to our amazement actually had less machine malfunctions in our precincts that day than we did for the 2000 Presidential in which we used the Shoup Lever machines. As a matter of fact the only problems we had were due to Poll Worker and Voter errors which were limited to 5 incidents that day in the entire City none of them kept anyone from casting there vote. My point is that in 2004 90% of our voters preferred the DRE's to the previous method of voting. The problem with going to optical scan in my opinion is that when it comes to mechanical reliability on election day,I use optical scan equipment in my Absentee precinct and have since I began working here in 1997. Any delays that I have ever had in getting my results has been on an optical scan device and my only alternative to scanning them was to count them by hand. In 2004 with the volume of paper ballots we had it took us 24 hours (and yes I was here from 4:30AM until 7:00PM the next day)My entire absentee precinct quit after that. Please consider the ramifications of passing legislation that takes us back in time and costs us more than we can afford to pay. It is hard to find Poll Workers now and most of them are up in age. None of them are willing to be put in the position of spending the night at a precinct. If we don't take our time and make sure that the next moves we make are good ones we may find ourselves with out election officials to work the polls on election day and an election outcome that is a nightmare.

I am utterly amazed that the Legislative Body, and in particular, the The House would act without a pronounced request from the body politic;who is really behind this request? why
were no trusted public servants called on to lend expert testimony? Why are so many General Registrars and Electoral Board Members (appointed by Boards of Supervisors & City Councils )so opposed to this legislation at this time? Why is there such an urgent time frame to get this legislation passed now, at this time?
Virginia with its long tradition of Jeffersonian debate: "here we are not afraid to follow any truth nor tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it" asks a simple question: Why this legislation, NOW?