We should use the Activism forum every time we can.

[Stevepol]

I just recently posted there about a LTTE I have sent regarding the electronic voting machines.

Anytime we have an idea about "doing something" to stop the hi-jacking of our democracy by the voting machine companies, we should publish there as well as here.

My letter uses some of the terminology of Land Shark and others who have helped refine our message. It also has only 171 words and our paper insists that letters be under 200 words.

Here's my letter:

Editors:

The most bipartisan issue in any democracy should be the fairness of the vote. No matter what party we belong to, we want to feel sure that our vote is counted fairly. Without that, it's impossible to even have a democracy. Yet today, when we vote using electronic voting machines, we are in effect handing a blank ballot to the owners and programmers of the machines and telling them, "Here, you fill in my vote for me and go ahead and use invisible ink." Is that the kind of democracy we want? At the very least it leads to immense suspicion and distrust. Recently on the internet I typed in "Election Fraud 2004" on Google and got 1,090,000 hits. Try it yourself. By now that number is higher I'm sure. If we want to restore trust and integrity to our voting system, all of us, regardless of political affiliation should demand a voter-verified paper ballot print-out and manual audits for all elections where electronic voting machines are used to count votes.

[wli]

1. "bipartisan?" not so fast

Most democracies have the ability to cope with numerous political parties' effective participation.