McKinney wants alternative to electronic voting machines

<p>Outgoing state Rep. Cynthia McKinney railed against the state's electronic voting machines Saturday, calling them "severely flawed" for their inability to provide a paper trail for each vote.</p><p>"I call on (Secretary of State Cathy) Cox to give Georgia voters a choice not to vote on electronic machines and get absentee ballots," she said. "We need to get to a different system or else we can't trust the one we got now."</p><p>While McKinney, who blamed the machines in the loss of her House seat in the July Democratic primary, had previously hinted at plans to challenge the legality of state voting laws, she ignored a reporter's repeated questions about those plans Saturday.</p><p>In a small room packed with reporters and supporters in suburban Atlanta, McKinney introduced a slate of activists who demanded officials get rid of electronic machines they claimed are open to _ and possibly designed for _ electoral fraud.</p><p>"If we fail to do that, then we surely have a threat to our democracy," McKinney said, adding her office received complaints from all over metro Atlanta from people who said they felt their vote hadn't been counted.</p><p>Recently, politicians from both parties have called for a paper trail to assure voters that their ballots have been recorded correctly. Secretary of State Cathy Cox has told the governor and state lawmakers that adding a paper ballot to Georgia's electronic voting machines could cost about $19.5 million, while buying new machines would cost the state more than $66 million.</p><p>Cox has said the cost estimates are based on quotes from Diebold Election Systems, the company that makes Georgia's voting machines.</p><p>In the November general election, several precincts will test a pilot program approved by the Legislature and supported by Cox in which voting machines print paper receipts.</p><p>McKinney, who's known for her confrontational style and a scuffle with a Capitol Hill police officer earlier this year, was forced into a runoff in the July primary by challenger Hank Johnson, an attorney and former DeKalb County Commissioner. Johnson went on to defeat McKinney 59 percent to 41 percent in the runoff.</p>