Lawrene Groobert

Testimony for the New York City Board of Elections

November 21, 2006

I attended the demonstrations of new voting equipment on Friday, November 17, in the Bronx. I personally felt that the DREs were too big, too complicated, and would not be easy for the average person to handle either as voters or election inspectors.

I am mostly concerned about security. There have been so many reports of problems that I urge you not to subject New York City to the same kinds of election irregularities that have occurred elsewhere. We really need to keep our elections as non-computerized as possible.

My daughter-in-law is a computer specialist, and she says that it is as simple as Computers 101 to tamper with the votes, ballots, and tallies in DREs. We really need hand-marked paper ballots if we want to be able to have a chance to prevent tampering. If we can't protect paper ballots, we won't have a chance with electronic ballots.

Thank you.