It might not be back to square one with voting machines, but the growing rejection of touch-screen machines could have voting rights advocates wondering why their perennial concerns about these systems weren't taken more seriously.

Since the controversial presidential election of 2000 and the notorious hanging chads endlessly examined in Florida, the nation's voting technology has been a topic of debate. Responding to the public outrage over alleged undercounts of votes and votes apparently recorded for the candidate who was not the choice of the voter, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002. Tied with the passage of HAVA was $3 billion in federal tax dollars to help states modernize America's voting technology.

An infatuation with technology, combined with lobbying by the manufacturers, moved most of America to touch-screen technology, most without a paper record of the voters' completed ballots. Without some sort of paper record, voters' rights activists warned that recounts were impossible and many voters appropriately lacked confidence in all-electronic voting.

Voices of caution over rapid adoption of touch-screen machines were discounted by state and local officials who claimed, correctly, that they had to move quickly to the new technology or risk losing federal financial aid. As a result, many states rushed to install touch-screen machines before all of the concerns about the technology could be answered.

Now, it looks as though much of America will be changing course and moving toward paper ballots marked with a pencil and processed through a computer scanner. The paper form, much like a standardized test that students take, can serve as a paper backup in the event that a recount is required or the computerized results are challenged.

The problems in Florida during the 2000 presidential election were blamed on poorly maintained punch card machines and badly designed ballots, such as the infamous "butterfly ballot." In addition, there is no denying that some problems originated with voters who had trouble following instructions, or simply made mistakes.

But many of those same voters apparently also have trouble with touch screens, and even paper ballots marked for scanning.

If anything has been learned since the 2000 debacle in Florida, it is that no system is perfect — or foolproof. It also has become clear that when election results are extremely close, it is impossible to verify every vote and ensure that each vote has been cast as the voter intended.

That lesson, it appears, is going to be expensive because there now is a movement to abandon touch-screen voting machines and move back, in terms of total reliance on technology, to a paper ballot marked in pencil and scanned for tabulation by a computer.

Less than one month ago, Florida Gov. CharlesCrist announced plans and a $32.5 million budget request to replace touch screens with scanner-based systems. Some 18,000 undervotes, where a machine records no vote, occurred in Florida's Sarasota County and were just the latest embarrassment blamed on touch-screen voting machines.

In Congress, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., introduced a bill recently that requires voting machines to have a paper trail. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., plans to bring a similar bill before the Senate.

The trend away from touch-screen machines is clear. New Mexico dropped touch-screen machines (like those used in Butler County and much of Pennsylvania)in favor of optical-scan ballots in 2006. And Virginia's Senate passed a bill recently to gradually replace touch-screen machines with scanner-based voting systems.

Voting rights groups have long expressed concerns over touch-screen voting systems with no paper backup. And numerous computer experts' warnings of risks of hacking or other forms of manipulation have raised suspicions in the minds of many people over the reliability of touch-screen voting systems.

Billions of dollars of taxpayers' money could have been saved if Congress had spent more time examining the pros and cons of various voting systems, including touch-screen machines and scanner-based systems, before passing HAVA. In passing HAVA, Congress seems to have been more interested in appearing to be dealing with a problem rather than actually helping to solve a problem.

The momentum building by more states moving away from paperless systems suggests voting reliability will be getting better — not perfect, but better.