November 21, 2006

Dear Commissioners:

As a concerned citizen, I have met with some of you, who were so kindly willing to spend your unremunerated time hearing my concerns about electronic touchscreen voting machines (DREs). Now that we have gone through an election which tried those machines so widely, we can say with some confidence that a significant number of these machines did a major disservice to the voting community. I have included some articles detailing the nature and extent of that disservice.

For those of you who haven’t been able to meet with me, I urge you to watch the DVD "Bought and Sold, Electronic Voting in New York" which I believe you have received and will find interesting.

Added to the issue of reliability is the much greater cost factor of DREs. For those of you who have met with me, I provided a highly-detailed pollplace-by-pollplace comparison of the lever replacement costs for DREs vs PBOS (paper ballot optical scan) systems in your county. I also have documentation of the much higher ongoing costs for DREs. I would be happy to provide those documents to any one of you who requests them. You can reach me at 212-534-4103 here in New York City.

For these reasons, I strongly urge you, when you come to make the decision regarding voting machines for New York City, to choose optical scanners. Though they are not perfect, their flaws are detectable and correctable by poll workers and election officials. And they won’t break the bank, either at the beginning or down the road.

With thanks for your kind attention, I am

Sincerely,

Stephanie Low