Dear Editor,

Computers are counting the votes in [Your State], as well as in the rest of the states. But computer science experts have serious doubts about their reliability.

"Software flaws in a leading US electronic voting system could be used to subvert the outcome of an election, claim researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Rice University in the US." [NewScientist.com, July 25, 2003]

In 2002, Congress passed the Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA), which abolishes punch card voting and mandates an overhaul of the voting processes in all states. While it requires states to revise their election processes, it fails to require safeguards to ensure the integrity of our elections. Many states are scurrying to buy new systems and are, unfortunately, buying equipment that researchers have shown to be fraught with errors and open to fraud.

Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) maintains: "On election day 2004, how will you know if your vote is properly counted? Answer: you won’t." He and 30 co-sponsors have introduced a new bill – The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (H.R. 2239) which requires all voting systems to produce a voter-verified paper record. This means voters could make sure their ballots were correct before they are recorded, and the verified ballots would be tracked on paper rather than just electronically. It also requires open source software, so we won’t have to trust secret software to count our votes and hope that it works right. If our voting systems don't provide these capabilities, we won't know if our votes are counted correctly, and then if a manual recount is necessary, it will be impossible! But the bill has been in the Committee of House Administrations since its introduction last May.

Here's what we can all do to help protect our fundamental, democratic right -- the right to vote.

Contact the Secretary of State in [Your state capital and Sec. State's phone number] and ask if our voting process is tamper proof. Ask if it requires voter-verifiable ballots and a paper audit trail. Insist that it must.

Contact your state legislators and ask them to pass a law requiring that all election equipment in the state must have a voter-verifiable paper audit trail.

Contact your friends in other states and have them talk with their election officials about their states’ voting processes.

Call, email, or write to Representative [Name of the Rep in your district], Senator [Name of your Senator], and Senator [Name of your other Senator] and ask them to support Representative Rush Holt’s bill.