To the Editor:

     Last week New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson and Attorney General Patricia Madrid showed true leadership for their state’s citizens in a move we applaud and look for our own governor, state legislators, and Bucks County commissioners to emulate.  By announcing his plan to introduce legislation to make New Mexico an all-paper-ballot state, Richardson demonstrated bold leadership and a willingness to advocate for a voting system that allows citizens to cast their votes with confidence.  We are looking for no less from our Pennsylvania officials.

     Gov. Richardson's action will accomplish something extremely important.  By mandating the use of optical scan paper ballots in all their state elections, inaccurate, unreliable and insecure electronic voting machines that produce no voter-verifiable and auditable paper record will be a thing of the past.  His proposal is a great victory for the many concerned voting rights activists who have tirelessly advocated for voter-verified paper ballots and lobbied against unreliable touch-screen machines.  The catalyst for his decision was a lawsuit filed in January 2005 to restrain state and county officials from purchasing additional touch-screen machines.

     We are not alone in protesting machines that do not ensure our votes are reliably and incontrovertibly counted. Our own federal government’s investigative Government Accountability Office (GAO), in its September 2005 report, found that “election officials, computer security experts, citizen advocacy groups, and others have raised significant concerns about the security and reliability of electronic voting systems, citing instances of weak security controls, system design flaws, inadequate system version control, inadequate security testing, incorrect system configuration, poor security management, and vague or incomplete standards, among other issues…. The security and reliability concerns raised in recent reports merit the focused attention of federal, state, and local authorities responsible for election administration.” [Emphasis added.]

     We expect our elected officials to do their job and put our welfare above those of corporate interests.  We expect them to avail themselves of the extensively researched facts concerning the advantages and disadvantages of the voting systems, as directed by our own federal government. Government officials seem unduly biased toward voting systems being pushed by corporations that could potentially profit from millions of taxpayer dollars.  In the face of all the huge disadvantages demonstrated by touch-screen machines--the most glaring one being that they are not auditable and no recounts can be done in case of election discrepancies--we are extremely perplexed and greatly alarmed that officials are even considering them.  Some officials appear to be willfully ignoring facts in favor of vendor propaganda. Not one vendor or official has demonstrated a willingness to debate the merits of the voting systems. Why?

     Bucks county state Sen. Conti and Allegheny County state Rep. Dan Frankel have introduced legislation that would require auditable voter-verified paper ballots (SB 977 and HB 2000). We challenge our other state and local lawmakers to do what is best for Pennsylvania and the people who elected them. Governor Richardson and other governors around the nation have realized their expensive mistakes concerning initial use of electronic machines and have found better voting systems. There is a chance for Pennsylvania to avert that same expensive mistake. We must have voter-verified paper ballots now.

Mary Ann Gould

Coalition for Voting Integrity