-----Original Message----- From: Rich Andrews [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To Boulder County Election Review Committee: Minor adjustments to voting process that still rely on machine counts with secret computer code simply are not acceptable. Many countries and election locations around the world use simple hand counting of paper ballots with great success, a system that is totally verificable for every vote cast. Minor tune ups to a broken system are not sufficient. I ask you to throw out machine based systems, particularly machines that include any internal coding, or involve any transmittal of information from one machine to another. The simplest system of paper ballots manually counted is the best....without any embedded technology. The extra time taken to get the vote counts right is a small price to pay for accuracy. Voting is not about making the process easy for election officials to meet some artificial reporting time. It really does not matter if the vote count takes a week or more. The real issue is getting the counts accurately tabulated. Random audits of machines are not enough. Voting is integral to preserving democracy. Voting is the most important thing citizens can do to make government accountable to the people. Any hint of fraud, real, suspected, or imaginary is simply unacceptable in a free society. If the voting process cannot be done with full confidence of the people, the democracy itself is in peril. We simply must do away with any and all elements of black box voting, machines that use secret code, or systems that rely on electronics that can be maliciously manipulated, or even unwittingly are in error, or that cannot be fully verified in hand recounts. There is simply no excuse for not using simple paper ballots that are counted and recorded in full public view for every election. Paper ballots, hand counted have worked well in Canada, in the UK, in Ukraine, even in emerging democratic situations such as Bosnia, and Iraq. Speed and ease for the benefit of county clerks is simply not a valid reason for not conducting elections that are open and fully accountable, fully verifiable of the voter intent. A willing set of volunteers will be available to assist with manual counts. Expense is a fallacious argument. Volunteers will not need to be paid. People want democracy, first and foremost. I am sick of seeing election fraud and manipulation in this country, the supposed bastion of freedom and democracy. Mechanisms and machinery that allow for the potential for fraud at any level of government must be eliminated, including our own systems here in Boulder County. The last two U.S. presidential elections have been manipulated and we are all suffering from it....particularly the hundreds of thousands of innocents murdered in foreign lands by the war lords running the USA now. This must not be allowed to continue. Boulder County needs to be a leader in voting integrity. I want my vote to count. I insist upon it. Richard Andrews 2910 Juilliard St. Boulder, CO 80305 303 673 0098 (w)
