February 10,
2005
Assemblyman
Keith L.T. Wright
Chairman,
Assembly Committee on Elections
New York
State Assembly, LOB Room 749
Albany, NY
12248
RE: New
voting technology for New York State
Dear
Assemblyman Wright:
I want New
York State to keep our old lever voting machines. If that cannot be done, we
should require paper ballots marked by hand. Paper ballots can be counted by hand or by optical scanner
machines. Blind voters can mark paper ballots by using ballot templates, which
are inexpensive and work well in Rhode Island and in other countries. Or,
voters who are blind or have other disabilities can use a ballot-marking
machine such as the Automark.
I don't want
to cast my vote on a computer. And I am concerned with the votes of all voters
being subverted by computers. Regardless whether computer mistakes are due to
innocent errors or malicious hackers, no one can observe what is going on
inside the computer, and that opens the door to undetectable errors and fraud.
The idea of
voter-verified paper ballots is fine if they are used for a 100% audit of every
computerized election with 100% accuracy required. To my knowledge no Board of
Elections has the staff, expertise, or resources to perform a computer audits
with reconciliation of all discrepancies. 2% or 3% surprise random recounts of
voter-verified paper ballots are not enough. Banks and other companies do
complete audits of their computer systems because that is the only way to
guarantee accuracy--and Boards of Election need to do the same.
Everyone
understands how to safeguard lever machines and paper ballots, and handle them
securely.
Optical
scanners are computers, and I want to see these protections for them, to
prevent any secrets or back doors in how our elections are run:
1. All
software and other programming used in any computerized election equipment, as
well as all certification reports from
Independent Testing Authorities, must be posted
on our state Board of Elections website
for public inspection.
2. Ban
wireless communication devices in all computerized election equipment.
3. Require manual recounts of a percentage of the ballots
counted by each optical scanner
Respectfully
yours,
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