Reliable Voting In Danger Again
Utah does not have a reliable voting law. I know the legislature passed one in the last session, but Speaker Curtis and Senate President Valentine didn’t present that law to the Governor to sign. Apparently there was some sort of mix-up. I think people who mix up constitutional procedure shouldn’t be running the legislature, but we’ll get to that later.
If you’re seeing this today before 5pm, you still have a chance to email Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert and tell him to certify voting machines that produce a verifiable paper trail. Please send the email even if it’s after the deadline, as selection committee members need to know that this is important. The optical scan systems are the best ones under consideration, so recommend those.
I program computers professionally and I have worked for banks and medical offices. I can tell you that private enterprises depend on permanent paper records or archived digital scans of paper records for security even when they have computerized versions for those records and government should do the same. The only technology under consideration that can match private practice is optical scan voting.
I have spoken to some of my local election judges and they are telling me that the DRE machines are likely to cause problems for the older and disabled citizens of my neighborhood because they are harder for people unfamiliar with computers to use.
Please help secure our right to vote by certifying and recommending only optical scan systems to the counties for new HAVA voting equipment.
Thank you,
Brian Watkins
Salt Lake City, Liberty-Wells Community Council Chair
