Letter to the Editor, Intelligencer, March 18, 2008

Machines can't be audited

To the Editor:

I attended the Bucks County commissioners' special meeting recently concerning voting machines. Commissioner Jim Cawley rudely cross-examined and continuously interrupted Committee for Voting Integrity representative Madeline Rawley, thereby demonstrating that his intent was not to learn about the weaknesses of our current voting machines but rather to defend his and Commissioner Charley Martin's decision to buy them.

Mr. Cawley's premise is faulty. He places the burden on the public to prove that the current Danaher computer machines are unreliable. He demands examples of where the machines have failed to accurately record the vote, and in the absence of such examples, concludes that there is no problem. In fact, there may have been hundreds of incidents of inaccurate tabulating of votes on these machines, but we'll never know because we have no way of auditing them. The inability to prove that these machines are failing is the very problem that makes them unacceptable.

The burden of proof as to the reliability and trustworthiness of these machines belongs not on the public but on the commissioners who selected the Danaher machines despite very strong objections. It is their responsibility to prove to us that these machines accurately count our votes.

Mardi Harrison
Doylestown Township

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/320-03182008-1505224.html