Dear Senator:

I am a constituent asking you to support S 1980, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, introduced by Senator Bob Graham. This measure calls for safeguards to protect the balloting system. Each touch screen machine would produce a paper record for the voter to verify after voting on an electronic touch screen machine. The paper record would be secured for future auditing, if needed. Many states are rushing to buy electronic touch screen voting machines. They seem ideal, in keeping with modern life, but electronic voting has some inherent risks:

1. with no auditing system, miscounts are impossible to detect and recounts cannot be done. Technology failed in some 2002 elections. These machines have failed to count votes in some counties in Florida, and have crashed repeatedly during an election in Virginia.

2. with no paper to check, voters have no assurance that their ballot has been cast, or cast correctly. There is no way to check, because only numbers are recorded. It stands to reason that a reliable count of votes depends upon having something to count.

3. computer experts say that touch screen software is full of security flaws, which would easily allow an insider to rig an election. The news is full of stories about hacker hijackings, so why not an election? No machine is completely reliable, and anyone who works with computers knows this.

Our Democracy rests upon the idea that our leaders govern with the consent of the governed. Without consent there is no democracy. Without a reliable balloting system, voters cannot be sure that their choices are recorded and counted. If voters have no confidence in the systems which count their ballots, it doesn't matter who's ahead in the polls, who has the most effective campaign, or even who ends up with the most votes. The lowest blow of all to voters would be to doubt that their choices were recorded properly, or recorded at all.

Again, I urge you to support S 1980, The Voter Confidence and Accessibility Act. I look forward to hearing from you on this matter.

Sincerely yours,