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I live in Brooklyn, New York. Thank you for giving us, the public, this chance to speak. My concern is for the security and verity of our vote. I oppose any purchase of DRE machines, and here is why.

DRE voting separates the voter from their own votes in five ways: in the casting, recording, handling, storing, and especially the counting of our votes. Voters can't even see their own legal ballot, or know that it was recorded correctly by the computer. Election observers cannot observe the handling, storing, or counting of votes.

I am submitting this article by Victor Hull of the Herald Tribune, titled "Electronic voting trend may be short-circuiting.? It documents nationwide problems with touch screens. Votes were not recorded in New Mexico. Eighteen _thousand votes have gone missing and unrecoverable in Florida!

As my engineering friends like to say, "The more the moving parts, the more there is to go wrong.". Surely we do not need *costly, *hackable, *breakable, DREs, and the lawsuits they bring with them. We need paper ballot optical scan technology, with a precinct-based count using check-able paper ballots, marked by the voter, and retained by the machine.

Thank you again.

attached printout: "Electronic voting trend may be short-circuiting?

Victor Hull, Herald Tribune, 11/19/2006