Why won’t commissioners
fix voting machine mistake?
The Bucks County Commissioners’ meeting on Feb. 6 was a sad spectacle of government gone wrong, with elected
officials refusing to guarantee that the vote of every citizen in the county will be accurately counted.
Republican Commissioners Charles Martin and Jim Cawley ignored the more than 85 attendees who came from all corners
of Bucks
County to implore these two commissioners to abandon the defective Danaher touch-screen electronic
voting machines and replace them with paper-ballot-based, verifiable machines. For more than an hour, at least 25 citizens
composedly spoke of their concerns.
Instead, Martin and Cawley voted to spend tax money, $98,700, to extend the warranty on the Danahers but then voted
against a resolution presented by the Coalition for Voting Integrity that urged support in Congress for H.R. 5036. That
bill, cosponsored by Rep. Patrick Murphy, would provide emergency funds to replace deceptive electronic voting machines
like the Danahers, if a state requested it.
Many states, Florida, California, Michigan, New
Mexico and Maryland, among others, concerned that electronic touch-screen machines can be hacked into and election results changed, have
already replaced these flawed machines at their own expense.
Commissioner Diane Marseglia tried in vain to convince her colleagues to support the resolution so many concerned
citizens felt was needed to ensure honest elections, but Martin and Cawley weren’t listening.
Is it because the Republican administration won’t admit it made an expensive mistake even if it means depriving
citizens of their vote?
Estelle Brager
Upper Southampton
