I've learned you may adopt touchscreen voting machines as replacements for our current hand-lever machines. I hope you'll hold off on a vote implementing those new machines during this term.

Hundreds of websites detail concerns of computer experts and citizens - for more information please see my website www.citizenmom.com. Click on Vote Fix.

I hope you will allow the next commissioners to deal with the situation of whether to replace our current machines with something else, a computerized system, or a paper ballot system counted by optical scanners. (recommended by CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project) While monies may be available now, citizens deserve to have secure machines that are tamper-proof, now, not some possibility for the future. I'm asking you to hold off because "computer scientists are mounting a challenge to the new devices, saying they are less reliable and less secure from fraud than the equipment they are replacing." New Voting Systems Assailed

I hope you'll check out the following items.

Research conducted by Rebecca Mercuri, quoted in "Scattered problems mar debut of high-tech voting systems" and

"New Voting Systems Assailed, Computer Experts Cite Fraud Potential." Her testimony here: http://www.house.gov/science/full/may22/mercuri.htm and more.

Department of Registrar for County of Los Angeles, pilot program. Concerns about lack of paper trail, and obsolescence of the new machines within a few short years.

May 6, 2002 legal declaration of Kim Alexander including link to "Ten Things I Want People To Know About Voting Technology", http://www.calvoter.org/votingtech/riversidestatement.html Alexander's website contains details about the case of "Susan Marie Weber, who sued the Secretary of State, claiming that the paperless, touchscreen voting systems deployed in Riverside county are not safe from fraud and manipulation due to the use of proprietary software and the absence of a voter-verified paper trail." Weber's filing is here: http://www.electionguardians.org/memo_against_SJ.htm

The Risks of Touch-Screen Balloting San Francisco Chronicleon Monday, December 4, 2000 cited here: http://www.whoseflorida.com/voting_machines.htm

The paper ballot is endorsed by Pat Buchanan and Network America's Citizens for a Fair Vote Count. November 10, 2000 NA (Network America) e-wire "Buchanan to National Press Club: Supporters Want Paper Ballots, Not Computerized Voting

Faulty voting equipment -- mainly touchscreen computers, but also the more traditional punchcard and lever voting machines -- lost up to 6 million of the ballots cast by more than 100 million Americans on Election Day 2000, says the CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project.

That organization, a non-partisan study funded by the Carnegie Corp., calls for those methods to be replaced by paper ballots counted by optical scanners. That method is most efficient, and it leaves the paper trail essential for meaningful recounts, the project says.

In contrast, computers reduce votes to electrons on some data-storage medium, which can be recounted in the aggregate but not examined ballot-by-ballot, said Dan Seligson, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C., based non-partisan research firm electionline.org.

"The new touch-screen voting machines, aggressively marketed by a number of companies, carry risks that go to the heart of whether we can even trust election results," wrote Lauren Weinstein recently in Wired magazine.