I just listened to a program this morning (on my local NPR station, but the program was locally produced) discussing touch-screen paperless voting.

The woman who spoke in favor of requiring an auditable, verifiable, re-countable paper-trail (I can't recall who she was, but she was a computer expert of some kind) had example after example of screw-ups that have already occurred with touch-screen voting. One of the woollier ones was a town where the number of votes cast not only exceeded the number of registered voters in that town, it exceeded the total population of the town! When it's actually being fairly reliable (but only precariously so), most touch-screen voting systems are absolutely duck-soup for someone with a little computer skill to diddle.

BUT—the best argument against paperless touch-screen voting was the guy who spoke in favor of it. He accused anyone who opposed touch-screen voting of being a "Luddite" and wanting to go back to the horse and buggy, further claiming that insisting on an auditable, re-countable paper-trail betrayed an unpatriotic lack of confidence in the election officials. He interrupted the woman several times, made insulting remarks, and ignored the moderator's attempts to maintain a reasonably decorous debate.

Add to this the comment of the Diebold executive who said that he considered it his God-ordained duty to see that Bush was re-elected in 2004. . . .

The woman mention H.R.2239 and S.1980 and urged people to voice their concerns to their Congressional Representatives and Senators. Information HERE

Don Firth

P.S.: The woman noted that the "hanging chad" problem in Florida never would have happened if the chad trays had ever been cleaned out. Lousy maintenance on the part of the election workers.