While I’m relieved that Washington’s Democrats raised the money to call for a statewide recount, I am completely baffled by this aspect:

Before their recounts can begin, Snohomish and Yakima counties will have to print out paper ballots to record tens of thousands of votes cast at the polls Nov. 2 on the computer-voting machines. [seattle p-i

Without getting into the merits of Gregoire vs. Rossi or the problems with electronic voting, I’m really curious about how creating ballots from the data will help.

Does anyone know more about the voting technologies used in these counties? I assume that they didn’t have a “paper trail” since they are printing the ballots now instead of on election day.