To the editor,
We are just a few weeks from Election Day and for many of us an opportunity to have our voices heard. However, voter fraud also rears its ugly head and continues to grow.
Several years ago former Senator Dodd and Senator Blumenthal spearheaded a move to replace all our voting machines, notably here in Connecticut, or venerable and trusted mechanical machines, with electronic machines. Since this switch we have observed voting districts where not a single vote was cast for Mitt Romney in 2012 (statistically incredible) and hundreds of others where software irregularities were discovered which changed the votes from one party to the other party, overwhelmingly to Democrats. What a co-incidence, huh?
When you go to the polls in November and you insert your ballot into the voting machine how do you know how your vote was recorded? You don’t, plain and simple. You can only hope that no one has monkeyed with the software and changed your vote. Frightening, isn’t it.
Since I spent most of my working career writing computer programs I can speak with some credence on this subject.
Why not modify these voting machines to produce a printed receipt, with a unique serial number, a number printed on the ballot and recorded by voting personnel to your name and verified by you before casting your ballot. With a printed receipt, folded and sealed by the voting machine, you can then verify your vote and keep the evidence for use if it ever became necessary to recount the ballots, which would be saved and locked up for a minimum of one year after the election. Not only would this go a long way toward reducing fraud but would discourage tampering with the voting machines, since it would now be much easier to detect fraud.
Since the serial number is not identified to you on the ballot or receipt, your vote remains secret.
We definitely need something to protect our vote from tampering by unscrupulous individuals and parties. Contact your congress person(s) and demand these machines be modified to protect our precious vote.
If you have another or better idea, I am all ears and would love to see them on these pages so we can all participate in resolving this growing problem.
George L. Sirois
Naugatuck
