Our votes should not be entrusted to "electronic ballots" in machines with secret software which have been shown to be unreliable. We must use paper ballots for all votes, and we must use a manual count of at least some of those paper ballots to check that any machine count is accurate.

Senator Gordon's bill, SB05-198 (see http://www.leg.state.co.us/), is a great step in this direction. Please support the following requirements in Colorado voting legislation:

• Require electronic voting machines to produce a voter verified, paper ballot, suitable for auditing, as the permanent official record of the votes cast.
• Immediately following every election, require a manual count audit which compares a hand count of a statistically significant, randomly selected set of batches of paper ballots, to an official abstract of the election with subtotals by batch (where a "batch" could be a precinct, the ballots from an individual machine, or some other convenient collection of ballots).
• Unambiguously declare that a hand recount of paper ballots is the final authority in every recount. Repeal the provisions of existing laws that prohibit recounts of paper ballots (HB04-1227)
• Create and enforce laws that require preference for election tabulation accuracy over election tabulation speed in the selection of voting technology