Concerned About Our Government's Future

To the editor,
   The testimony heard by the 9/11 Commission made it clear that the Bush administration failed to take steps to protect the public from terrorists in spite of urgent warnings. That constitutes incompetence or negligence, but not a crime. Terrorists took advantage of incompetence and negligence, but they were not knowingly abetted.
   By now, officials and elected representatives should be aware that our democracy is also urgently threatened in a way even more serious than the threat posed by terrorists. Democracy in America is now in the early stages of being overthrown by stealth because of predictable crimes that may never be proven or even detected. The election of November 2004 will make vote-stealing in Florida in 2000 look like petty theft. The Republican administration and the Republican-controlled Congress are abetting the commission of vote-stealing by knowingly failing to take needed steps to protect the November 2004 election.
   Urgent warnings have been voiced by hundreds of journalists and computer scientists who say new electronic voting machines are terribly vulnerable to hacking by both insiders and outsiders. The administration has done nothing to confront that problem. Bills to correct the problem have languished in Republican-controlled congressional committees for months.
   Votes are subject to theft, and that crime may be undetectable if electronic voting machines are not fitted with a voter-verifiable, printed paper ballot for audit and recount. If vote theft should occur in November in even one or two states, that would be enough to sway results in a close election. Anybody who says that could not happen was not paying attention to what went on in Florida in 2000.
   Certain administration officials, senators, and representatives may deny that there is an urgent need to protect honest elections, but the cat is out of the bag. Our own Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison sits on the Senate committee that is holding up passage of SB 1980, a bill that provides for a printed paper ballot that can be verified by voters and used for audits and recounts if needed.
   Every concerned American should let officials and elected representatives know that they will be held accountable – incompetence and negligence will not be accepted as excuses when vote stealing is knowingly abetted by failure to take action that is clearly required.
   We citizens are counting on our government not only to protect us from terrorists but also to protect our right to vote in fair elections. It's an urgent issue. Let's hope they get this one right.