Voters should know by the end of the year what the future of voting will look like.

If the new electronic voting machines meet the state-mandated requirements, voters will be casting their ballots on secure, accurate and easy-to-use machines. The requirements were announced as part of a request for proposal (RFP) that was released today by the state elections office after months of study by the Voting Equipment Selection Committee.

Before selecting the machines, the committee will evaluate the machines to find the vendor that provides the best approach to ensuring accurate voting, Utah Director of Elections Amy Naccarato said. Because the committee has not evaluated machines in more than a year, they intentionally left the exact guidelines vague so as to allow for new technology.

"We wanted all of our options open," she said. "We've seen some of the equipment, but we don't know everything available or what is being developed."

Among the options that are not necessarily required are paper print-outs of the ballot for the voter to take from the machines, primarily because they did not want to eliminate machines which may actually be more secure simply because they did not have a printer.

"We want the vendors to be able to demonstrate the security and accuracy of the machine," she said. "A paper ballot may be one way to do that, but there may be other ways."

The new machines are required under the Help America Voting Act, which was passed following the problems in the 2000 election. Under the act, states must have replaced their old voting systems — in Utah, it is the punch-card ballot — by the 2006 election, a requirement which could cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

Because of those cost and security issues, the state should not be rushing into the purchase of the machines, said Kathy Dopp, one of the organizers of the Utah Count Votes group. Instead, they should wait at least a year until better machines can be developed.

"The cost is going to go down, and the accuracy and security will improve," she said. "It makes no sense to purchase these this year."

She would also like a public comment period on the RFP, so that other requirements — such as "the less expensive, more secure" open source code or printed ballots that can easily be scanned to validate the machine results — can be incorporated. To possibly delay the purchase and educate the public, the group plans to demonstrate some of the possible problems associated with the machines during the national Computer Ate My Vote Day, scheduled for Tuesday.

"There are no machines on the market that are suitable," Dopp said. "They are all susceptible to insider fixing, hacking and errors."

The proposals are due by Aug. 10, and the committee expects to finish its evaluations sometime after the November general election and before the end of the year. Copies of the RFP will be available sometime this morning at www.purchasing.utah.gov.

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