Honorable __________________________
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

I am concerned about the insecurity of electronic voting systems. Computer security means more than safety from hackers. It means that the results of normal operation can be independently proven to be correct.

Most of these electronic voting systems have been designed without the capacity for independent audit! Even if they appear to function correctly, no one really knows or can prove whether or not they have recorded the voters' ballots correctly or have produced correct final tallies.

It is inappropriate for American voters to "trust" computers that count our votes in secret and provide no way to perform an independent audit (recount) of the ballots cast or the final tallies.

The only way current technology provides for us to confirm the correct operation of these electronic voting systems is for them to print a voter-verifiable paper ballot with the voter's choices, which the voter can verify while still in the voting booth. For these reasons I urge you to co-sponsor S 1980, Senator Bob Graham's "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003." This bill would require all voting systems to produce a voter-verified paper record for use in manual audits and recounts, and deal with other important election issues.

Also, please oppose Senator Hillary Clinton's bill called the Protecting American Democracy Act of 2003 which superficially appears to address the same problems--in fact it is unspecific and does not require computerized voting systems to have independent audit capability.

Sincerely yours,