Great letter RE: Voting issues in CA

[kcass1954]

http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/12462410p-13318435c.html

Letters to the editor
McPherson's task

Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, February 26, 2005

Re "Shelley replacement named," Feb. 12: I haven't seen The Bee report on the most important question about the nominee for secretary of state: Will Bruce McPherson insist on recountable, voter-verified paper trails? Or will he send our votes into electronic black boxes where we must blindly trust private interests to count the vote - companies such as Diebold, with a CEO who promised to deliver Ohio to President Bush; a voting computer programmer convicted of felony computerized theft; and an absurd claim you can't make good paper trails even though it sells them all the time in ATM machines? Will McPherson insist on public, open code from any vendor in California?

The way votes are counted must not be a "trade secret." Democracy and the ability to know the votes are counted honestly are too important. Besides, any computer programming student can program menus, counting and vote-tallying. Creative, user-friendly programs can get the same nonsecret copyright protection that music gets.

The Bee made an endorsement before posing these crucial questions (editorial, "Good choice / Legislature should confirm McPherson," Feb. 12). I ask the Legislature to pose these questions before making its crucial decision on the nomination.


- Adrienne Kandel, Davis

[Peace Patriot]

1. Thank you, Adrienne Kandel! Fab letter! Anybody know the time-

-table for McPherson hearings?

I've often had reason to "Gr-r-r-r-r!!!" at the Sac-of-Crap-Beeline-for-the-Money, corporate lapdog "news"paper. They're all on board the Bush Cartelization of Calif.

I think I'm going to start calling them the VUN's (very unreliable news). (We were chatting about the inadequacy of the name MSM--"mainstream news media," at DU recently. No way are they "mainstream.")

At least they published a letter. But that doesn't let them off the hook. They joined and promoted the Shelley witchhunt. They've fawned over Schwarz. They've been very corrupt VUNs for as long as I can remember.