We must have PAPER BALLOTS, hand-counted in SC (shout-out to any SC DUers)

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

Our voting process must be absolutely transparent. We all remember what happened in 2004, and the bitterness this still continues to sow. We need paper ballots that are counted by hand-- in fact, by two different, independent hands and with results at each stage tabulated and double-checked, so that we can have confidence in the process.

South Carolina at present, plans on using touch-screen voting machines that have no paper trail, and which cannot be audited and which, furthermore, are extremely unreliable and easy to hack. As meegbear posted, no less than a respected computer science professor at Princeton has labeled the machines terribly insecure, and even w/o outright fraud, their very unreliability makes them unsuitable for producing an election result in which people can have confidence.

Please note, this has nothing to do with which candidate you're supporting. I'm a Democrat who above all cares about our democracy, and you cannot have a democracy without absolute transparency of the electoral process. Besides, it's extremely damaging to all of our candidates when our own people so thoroughly question the results of a primary (as in New Hampshire) in which non-auditable voting machines were so extensively used. Whether or not one believes such doubt is justified, the reality is that it's there, in spades, and we need to dispel that doubt since it only damages our own credibility.

[K Gardner]

1. This issue was raised on Countdown tonight.. there is legislation pending that will

PAY for every state that wants to opt-in to a different system, so states can't say "can't afford it". I'll have to track down the contact info about how to support this legislation. Somebody here probably has it. Twenty states have no paper trail, including mine. This has to be fixed before the GE.

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

2. That's great news

Especially with all the bitter controversy swirling with the racial issue now, the SC primaries must absolutely be above board. There must be above any suspicion there, with a paper trail.