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Voter distrust has been a plague to election officials around the country trying to make the conversion to electronic voting machines.

Voter-verified paper ballots and automatic hand recounts would be a good start toward relieving some of the concerns, activists say.

Arizona recently adopted legislation adding those requirements, and Democratic Congressman Raúl Grijalva appeared in Tucson on Wednesday with a fellow Democrat, New Jersey Rep. Rush Holt, to promote a bill to implement those changes across the country.

Holt, the bill's sponsor, called it a "gold standard" of election integrity.

Electronic voting machines have been installed across the county, including in Pima County, to comply with the Help America Vote Act, which requires that people with disabilities be able to vote unassisted.

In Pima County, Diebold touchscreen voting machines will be available in each precinct for disabled voters, while most voters will continue to vote using paper ballots and optical scanners.

But in many states, all voters are using the touchscreen machines, which record the votes electronically.

"The Help America Vote Act was passed to do away with hanging chads and butterfly ballots," Holt said. "Money was made available, and many counties rushed out to buy these new touchscreen machines that are clean, simple, easy to use and completely unverifiable."

Holt, who was in Arizona to attend hearings today in Sierra Vista on immigration, said his legislation would provide important safeguards, including a voter-verified paper record, an automatic audit of 2 percent of all precincts to make sure what was recorded electronically matches the paper record, and documentation of the chain of custody of voting machines.

The bill also would ban the use of undisclosed software and the connection of voting machines to the Internet.

Arizona recently adopted legislation that included requirements for a paper trail and a 2 percent audit, but Grijalva said the federal legislation would provide for uniform standards across the country.

Grijalva said the legislation would counteract cynicism about elections after the controversies of 2000 and 2004.

"This legislation is to add some sense of hope and optimism that our votes count," he said.

The bill has more than 200 sponsors, including several Republicans, but its passage is not assured, Holt said.

Even if the legislation were adopted this year, it likely would not go into effect until 2008.