Questions About the Outcome of the Election

There continue to be issues regarding the outcome of this year's election. Certainly, there are many questions about the appropriate use of electronic voting machines, and in my mind there must be some effort made to create a paper trail system to allow recounts if necessary. Why not create a redundancy system in which votes are tallied electronically, a paper 'scan-tron' ballot is printed, and that ballot is then scanned by another machine to create a 'back-up' vote count in the event some failure of the electronic system occurs. Further, the paper ballots create a means for allowing recounts in close elections.

I have no doubt that there were many unfortunate incidents in this year's election that could cast doubt on the results; however, I believe it is essential that we try to fix the voting process for the future rather than question whether something terrible may have happened this year. The election is over, and whether your candidate was John Kerry, Ralph Nader, another third-party candidate, or a write-in candidate, we must accept the countable totals and attempt to prepare for the major elections in 2006 and 2008. A more effective and useful system MUST be in place by that time; we cannot be overly concerned with the results this time--can we honestly believe that over 3 million votes were counted incorrectly or discarded? I'm just not sure we can.