Ella Matthews

Testimony before the Board of Elections, November 21, 2006

My name is Ella Matthews.

I live in Brooklyn, New York.

I am a computer programmer and have been employed in this field for the past thirty nine years. I am here to urge you to select paper ballots and optical scanners. I oppose the use of electronic voting machines, called DREs.

Most of my daily work involves trying to untangle the vagaries of computer software that is installed on the machines in my office. We also have optical scanners and I never have the kinds of technical problems with scanners that we have with the software that exists on our desktop computers.

Computers are not the right way to conduct our elections. We should stick with paper, and let people observe the procedures and then everyone will know that our elections were conducted according to the law and the proper handling of the votes.