To the Editor:

The Herald's article, "Voters root for the paper trail" (March 6), presented a very clear

picture of why we need to replace our present Danaher Direct Recording

Electronic voting system now with a voter-marked paper ballot-based voting

system.  As the article explained, Bucks County's election results in

November may determine who is the next president.  If the election results

are close, a recount may be necessary.  There is no way to do a meaningful

recount on our present DRE voting system as there is no paper record,

external to and independent of  the software programming in the machine.

Any recount done on our present machine depends solely on the electronic

count  produced by software programming inside the machine.

When the voter marks a paper ballot, that ballot is read by an optical

scanner and saved inside the scanner.  That paper ballot can be used for a

recount as a check on the electronic count produced by the optical scanner.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency

commissioned to recommend standards for voting machines, said that this was

the only presently available voting system that could produce valid election

results.  Recognizing the urgent need for these voter-marked paper ballots,

Representative Holt of New Jersey has introduced a bill that would reimburse

counties that replace their externally paperless voting machines with this

type of paper ballot based system.

Bucks County citizens should let the County Commissioners know that they

want a voter-marked paper ballot system so that they can be sure that their

intended votes were cast.

Madeline Rawley

Doylestown