Verified Voting

Tell Your County: North Carolina Deserves the Best Voting System

One minute is all it takes to help save North Carolina's counties and taxpayers millions of dollars... one minute for the best possible implementation of the verifiable voting law we all worked so hard to pass.

Some would like NC to buy expensive e-voting machines (DREs) that are vulnerable to malfunctions. But this would undermine the intent of our new law: to increase voter confidence in our elections.

North Carolina can choose a better system, the precinct-based optical scan system, which starts with a voter-verified paper ballot and costs far less than DREs, both to buy and to maintain and operate. This system is used with equipment that assists the disabled to mark and verify ballots privately and independently.

The counties have a say in this. If you tell your county decision-makers: "Don't fail us! For once, the best system is the most cost-effective," you can make the difference.

Don't let them undo the "Public Confidence in Elections" Act. Take 60 seconds: send a message to your election officials and county commissioners to say no one wants millions of tax dollars wasted on a system we know will fail.

When you are done, you can pass this alert on to everyone you know. Use the sample letter below, or feel free to edit it as you see fit. (If you prefer to send a fax, please click the "send fax" box below.)

December 18, 2009

Subject:

We have a choice. Waste local taxpayer money on bad election equipment with a 20% failure rate, or spend NO local taxpayer money to get the election system recommended by computer experts, citizen activists, and disabled community advocates. Starting next year all election equipment must produce a voter verified paper record, and every polling place must have disabled-accessible equipment. Two choices might meet these requirements: Touchscreen machines (DREs) produce a paper record on a thermal paper roll that is hard to read, hard to recount, compromises ballot secrecy, and will cost localities hundreds of thousands--even millions--of dollars. And with DREs, we still need paper ballots for absentee voting and for polling place emergencies. Optical scan systems start with a paper ballot, so voters verify the actual ballot as they mark it. Ballot-marking devices make the optical scan ballot accessible. They are strongly preferred by NC disabled advocates because they offer more assistive features to serve a much wider range of disabilities, and because they let the disabled voter verify the paper ballot independently and privately (a feature most DRE systems do not offer). Optical scan systems are recommended by computer scientists, citizen activists, and disabled advocates. The full cost would be covered by existing federal grants to the state. Other states have selected this HAVA-compliant option statewide as the most cost-effective and easiest to use for voters and election officials alike. North Carolina's High Point Enterprise (Nov. 17) said "In addition to the cost savings, the optical-scan method involves a hard-paper ballot that could be counted as many times as necessary to ensure a 100-percent correct voting result. And that’s the most important bottom line of this issue." I agree. The choice is simple: The citizens of North Carolina will not stand for their counties to waste millions of dollar on machines that experienced a 20% fail rate in recent tests in California. For once the least expensive system is the best system. It is time to do the right thing for North Carolina. I ask you: please do not waste my tax money on a system that will cost more money to buy, more money to maintain, and will likely have to be replaced after it fails next year. I urge you to recommend and purchase optical scan machines with ballot marking devices for the disabled when you have the choice next month.
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