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TheReporter.Com

Vacaville, CA

12/31/2005

Letter to the Editor:

State quiet on voting machines

Before anyone breaths easier that the state won't be decertifying voting machines used in Solano County and 10 other counties ("Solano's voting machines OK," The Reporter, Dec. 30), don't voters have a right to know whether the machine's problems truly have been fixed?

Anyone who believes they are entitled to have their vote counted accurately should be concerned about the revelation that some Election Systems & Software machines didn't proper record people's votes in the November 2005 election. Despite being aware of the issue since mid-November, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson has yet to publicly disclose the problems with the machines or, more importantly, how ES&S plans to fix the problems and why voters should have confidence in those proposed solutions.

You do not build people's confidence in voting systems by refusing to talk about the problems with the machines in public and for the Secretary of State to continue to withhold this information is as outrageous as it is unacceptable. The decisions about the types of voting equipment Californians are going to use to elect their representatives and approve or defeat proposed initiatives need to be made in public, in the open, right here in California.

The Help American Vote Act was designed to make it easier for people to cast their ballots and improve the accuracy of the vote count. If the Secretary of State simply makes it easier to vote without ensuring every voter's vote will be accurately counted, California will have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars and pulled the rug out from under our democracy in the process.

Debra Bowen, Redondo Beach

The author, a Democrat, is the chairwoman of the state Senate Elections, Reapportionment and Constitutional Amendments Committee - Editor.

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