To the Editor:

When Commissioners Cawley and Martin voted to purchase Danaher paperless electronic voting machines, they discounted the concerns that led seven former Bucks County commissioners, 19 municipalities, and the Bucks County Association of Township Officials to pass resolutions in favor of voting machines that produce a voter-verified paper record so that machine tallies can be audited for accuracy and recounts could be held if necessary. On election day in Philadelphia, where they use the same Danaher machines the commissioners chose, the Daily News reported that more than 100 voting machines were malfunctioning when the polls opened in the morning. The Inquirer quoted a city commissioner: "It's been a day from hell." Not reassuring about the reliability and accuracy of these machines.

Meanwhile, Diebold machines that were state-certified for PA have been found to have "'the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system,' said Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is an examiner of electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania," according to the New York Times.

Apparently, the commissioners did not completely disregard the voters' overwhelming preference for a paper record as proof that their votes count (87% in a Zogby poll), so they have resorted to trying to mislead Bucks County voters into believing that, contrary to fact, they did choose a system with a "paper audit trail that can verify all votes cast on each machine," according to their handout at the polls. Printed tallies cannot verify that the vote counts are accurate. To verify that votes count as intended there must be evidence, like paper ballots, to count and compare with the tallies the machines generate. The ability to audit these machines' performance in an election is precisely what is lacking in the Danaher. Optical scanners and paper ballots would have provided that. Is it too late to reconsider this purchase?

Barbara Glassman
Pipersville