George Gilbert, the head of the Guilford County Board of Elections, does not want to get new voting machines because, he claims, the cost is prohibitive. But the State Board of Elections does not certify the voting machines used in Guilford County. This means Guilford County will have to buy new machines. The machines in use are more expensive than the optical scan machines that would provide a voter-verified paper ballot.
Both Burke and Carteret counties lost votes in the last election. And Guilford almost lost several thousand votes, too.
Any computer expert will tell you that, from time to time, machines fail. The only way to ensure our votes are recorded correctly is with paper records that voters check for accuracy and leave at the polling place to be used in case of a manual recount.
Let our lawmakers know we want our votes counted accurately, and we want it now. Senate Bill 223 and House Bill 238 provide these safeguards. Nothing less than our democracy is at stake. This is a nonpartisan issue both liberals and conservatives should be able to get behind.
Lee Baker
Greensboro
Comments (3)
Amen to paper trails.
Posted by Yvonne | June 11, 2005 6:30 AM
Tee need for this is so obvious I can only be cynically suspicious of those that do not feel a need for the paper trail.
Posted by James D. Rockefeller | June 11, 2005 7:03 AM
Beyond the well documented failures and subsequent loss of ballots we need to have assurance that the votes were recorded the way that we intended them to be. Computers are great at assuring that voters vote in a legitimate way (no voting for 2 candidates for same office etc) these voting machines are what computer professionals call "black boxes", something that we know what goes in and we know what comes out, but we don't know what happens in between. These things can be gamed in ways that may never be caught.
Ask yourself, what could possibly be the motivation for not requiring a paper trail. The cost is modest compared to the possible cost of not doing it.
Posted by Marshall | June 11, 2005 8:30 AM