I was asked to speak to you about the importance of voting and also speak about the current  controversy concerning touch screen voting. The first is easy. The second much more difficult.

Why Vote? The first answer is the obvious one. So that your voice will be heard in our democracy. And the only sure way for it to be heard is to register to vote and then follow up and vote. This doesn’t mean in our complicated world that you have to vote for all offices and all ballot measures. Vote for what and whom you feel informed about. If you need additional information about candidates and/or issues, try the League’s special web site – smartvoter.org. You can type in your address and receive a full ballot and also the location of your voting place. You can find information about how to request an absentee ballot. You can also find detailed information about ballot measures written in language everyone can understand. The second reason Leaguers usually cite is vote because it is your right and responsibility as a citizen. Let the politicians know that you care about what they do by either supporting them or their opponents.

Now to the questions about touch screen voting. The National League supports electronic voting because there are advantages in ensuring voter access to the disabled.  The National League does support extensive random testing of touch screen machines as they comes off the assembly lines, upon delivery, prior to opening the polling places on election day, and post election.

In California, we are still looking for better security measures to make certain that every vote is counted – and counted correctly. More specifically we want to be sure that the way you vote is accurately reflected and that you have some means of verifying your vote. I am not a techno wizard and cannot describe to you the many different ways of making this happen. It is up to the Secretary of State Kevin Shelly, local county officials like the Registrar of Voters, and the makers of the machines to come to agreement on how to achieve that goal.

Some of these concerns come from very technically knowledgeable people who see ways to distort our election process and also ways to prevent this from happening. Some of these concerns come from people who are frankly alarmists who see conspiracies in everything government does. But to be fair, some changes are needed to ensure that each voter feels that their vote counts and that they can verify it.

In closing the League hopes that in the near future the method or methods chosen will be easy for all voters to use, offers the most opportunities for correct voting to the largest number of voters, and is secure enough to make the electorate confident that the election has been conducted fairly.