The state's new electronic voting machines generate no paper trail for use in recounts. If irregularities are suspected, all anyone can do is double-check the vote totals reported by the machines.

Those skeptical about electronic voting got ammunition last week from a draft report from the experts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The acronym-crammed 14-page document concludes that paperless voting systems aren't secure and comes down on the side of "software-independent" optical-scan machines that count paper ballots.

No one is sure if this report will affect the decisions of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which is charged with drawing up with guidelines for the nation's voting systems. But the document provides food for thought as Maryland's elected officials return to the issue.

Luckily, officials have two years to get ready for the next statewide election. And, as The (Baltimore) Sun reported last week, they seem disposed to tackle this issue promptly. State Senate President Mike Miller and House Speaker Mike Busch say the legislature will work on providing a voting system with a paper trail for the next election. The governor-elect has set up a transition team work group to study election issues.

The biggest question is likely to be whether the state should go to optical-scan machines, or whether it can modify the new electronic machines - for instance, to print up a paper record that can be checked by the voter and then held in the event of a recount.

The latter might be enough to ease instinctive voter fears about the electronic machines. And perhaps it would be cheaper as well. But would it really change anything? For if someone is able to beat the electronic system's safeguards and tamper with the software, wouldn't he be able to program the machines to print one thing on paper while electronically recording something else?

At any rate, at the minimum, the state needs a voting system with some type of paper trail. And state officials should decide on this in 2007. For if this year's experience demonstrates anything, it's that rational action on voting methods becomes nearly impossible in an election year.