The future of American democracy will be in peril if new voting machines mandated under federal law do not have a voter-verified paper trail, activists said Tuesday night.
"If you cannot trust the way your vote is counted, not much else in politics matters," Marian Beddill, a member of Whatcom Fair Voting, told the approximately 40 people who turned out for a voting forum at Bellingham Public Library.
Under the Help America Vote Act, which Congress passed in the wake of the 2000 presidential election, Whatcom County must replace its punch-card voting machines by Jan. 1, 2006. The county will have to buy at least some touch-screen voting machines to allow disabled people to vote without help, and may replace all of its machines with touch-screen systems.
http://news.bellinghamherald.com/stories/20031119/LocalState/164868.shtml