Paper works!

I'm a sailor and go sailing all around Long Island Sound and the Northeast United States. I use electronic technology on board from autopilots to help steer the boat to electronic position indicators like LORAN and GPS. But, despite all these wonderful and handy electronic devices I still carry on board paper charts. Why? Because when these wonderful electronic systems fail. And they do fail! My paper charts keep on working. That's why I find it strange and suspicious that a Congressional appointed committee would reject the requirement to have a paper trail on electronic voting systems. The Washington Post has a story. Ronald Rivest, a computer science professor at MIT who heads a subcommittee on transparency and security understands the problem.

" Rivest told committee members that software errors in paperless machines could go undetected, leading to a situation in which "an election result is wrong and you have no evidence to show that it's wrong."

Then there is Committee member Brit Williams, a computer scientist who has conducted certification evaluations of Georgia's paperless electronic voting system, opposed the measure who said:

"You are talking about basically a reinstallation of the entire voting system hardware,"

No Mr. Williams we are talking about ensuring that the votes of the American people will be counted correctly. Just as I don't trust the electronics on board my sailboat I don't trust anyone who wants the American people to go into an electronic voting booth without a paper backup.