New York Times gets it right on bad voting bill

I was surprised and pleased to see the New York Times get it right on the awful electronic voting bill proposed by Dianne Feinstein and Robert Bennett.

In the guise of protecting our vote, the bill instead strips away requirements for a paper record of the vote, and does not require that any records be audited. In other words, whatever the machine says is it, period. That would be a death knell for Democracy. I think most people have no idea how slim the thread by which their vote is hanging from has become. The poor thread is fraying badly, and we are truly in serious danger of losing a vote that actually counts. This bill would snip the thread and let our vote fall into an inauditable abyss.

Here's what the Op Ed page of the NYT has to say today - please read the whole thing.

Congress has stood idly by while states have done the hard work of trying to make electronic voting more reliable. Now the Senate is taking up a dangerous bill introduced by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Robert Bennett, Republican of Utah, that would make things worse in the name of reform. If Congress will not pass a strong bill, it should apply the medical maxim: first, do no harm.

Please contact your senators and representative and ask them to oppose the Feinstein/Bennett electronic voting bill.