Stockton Record
Published Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Diebold still not ready for use
San Joaquin County may be in for quite a surprise when it realizes it's not "better off than a lot of others" after spending nearly $6 million on noncertified, error-prone Diebold TSx voting machines ("S.J. Voting Machines' Fate Up In Air," Dec. 13).
The Diebold TSx was decertified in 2004 after it prevented thousands of voters from casting their ballots and after Diebold was found to have violated state law. Diebold's first attempt to have the TSx recertified this summer failed when 30 percent of the machines crashed, froze or couldn't print the voter-verified paper trail required by law. Now the company is back, claiming all the problems have been solved.
The notion that California would even consider certifying a machine with a 30 percent failure rate is astounding. Why do some people think it's acceptable for counties to use voting machines that don't accurately count people's votes? San Joaquin County voters - all of them, not just 70 percent of them - are entitled to have their votes counted accurately. Either the machines are accurate and secure or they're not. That some counties have already bought the Diebold machines shouldn't play any role in determining whether they are certified.
The Help American Vote Act was designed to make it easier for people to cast their ballots and improve the accuracy of the vote count. If Diebold and Secretary of State Bruce McPherson simply make it easier to vote without ensuring your vote will be accurately counted, San Joaquin County will have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars and hurt our democracy in the process.
Debra Bowen, Chairwoman
Senate Elections, Reapportionment & Constitutional Amendments Committee
Redondo Beach
Sonora Union Democrat
Published Monday, January 9, 2006
Count every vote
To the Editor:
While Tuolumne County voters may not be directly impacted by the problems with the Elections Systems & Software voting machines, anyone who believes they have a right to have their vote counted accurately should by concerned about what's happening with e-voting ("State warns voting machine firm," Dec. 28).
The problems with the ES&S machines were revealed more than six weeks after the November 2005 election when a letter from the Secretary of State's office to ES&S was leaked to the press. The Secretary of State still hasn't publicly discussed what problems the machines had or, more importantly, how ES&S plans to fix the problems and why voters should have confidence in those proposed solutions.
You don't build people's confidence in voting systems by refusing to talk about the problems with the machines in public and for the Secretary of State to continue to withhold this information is as outrageous as it is unacceptable. The decisions about the types of voting equipment Californians are going to use to elect their representatives and approve or defeat proposed initiatives need to be made in public, in the open, right here in California.
The Help American Vote Act was designed to make it easier for people to cast their ballots and improve the accuracy of the vote count. If the Secretary of State simply makes it easier to vote without ensuring your vote will be accurately counted, California will have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars and pulled the rug out from under our democracy in the process.
Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach
Chairwoman
Senate Elections, Reapportionment and Constitutional Amendments Committee
Long Beach Press Telegram
Published Sunday, January 2, 2006
VOTING MACHINES
Re: Polling irregularities'' . Anyone who believes they're entitled to have their vote counted accurately should be concerned about the revelation that some Elections Systems & Software (ES&S) machines didn't properly record people's votes in the November 2005 election.
Despite being aware of the issue since mid-November, the secretary of state has yet to publicly disclose the problems with the machines or, more importantly, how ES&S plans to fix the problems and why voters should have confidence in those proposed solutions.
You don't build people's confidence in voting systems by refusing to talk about the problems with the machines in public, and for the secretary of state to continue to withhold this information is as outrageous as it is unacceptable.
The decisions about the types of voting equipment Californians are going to use to elect their representatives and approve or defeat proposed initiatives need to be made in public, in the open, right here in California. The Help American Vote Act was designed to make it easier for people to cast their ballots and improve the accuracy of the vote count.
If the secretary of state simply makes it easier to vote without ensuring your vote will be counted exactly as you cast it, California will have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on voting equipment and pulled the rug out from under our democracy in the process.
Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach
Chairwoman, Senate Elections, Reapportionment and Constitutional Amendments Committee
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