Jane E. Colvin

Good afternoon, Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for holding this hearing and providing me with this opportunity to be heard.

My name is Jane Colvin and I am a member of the League of Women Voters and a registered voter in Manhattan.

I am here to urge you to select Paper Ballots and Optical Scanner machines.

I went to the machine demonstrations in Queens and the Bronx and listened carefully.

The demonstrations were impressive; the DRE voting machines, however, are not.

Compared to the DRE system, the PBOS system is:

• Economically superior
• Easier for poll workers to support, and
• Easier to find and correct errors.

While I believe many others will address the issues of ease of use and accuracy, I would like to emphasize the advantageous economics of the PBOS system.

On a strictly economic basis the PBOS system is a low-cost winner:

Financially, it

• costs much less than DREs to purchase
• costs proportionately less to use and maintain
• costs less for poll worker training, and
• lasts 15-20 years vs. 5-10 years for the DREs

The PBOS system is economical in another important respect:

• Because voters require less time to use the scanner, it can serve more voters that a DRE.
• As a result, fewer machines will be required to replace the lever machines.
• This means that with the PBOS system, New York City
• will be able to continue using our current polling places
• will spend less for purchasing and maintaining the machines

I would like to provide you with a copy of an article that appeared on the website ncvoter.net, entitled Operating Cost Comparison for Different Types of Voting Systems which provides a comparison of total annual expenditures for touch screens and optical scanners in North Carolina, demonstrating the economy of the PBOS system from a state that has experience with both kinds of voting equipment.

Thank you for your attention.