With the presidential campaign heading into the final months, one point of agreement between Senator McCain and Senator Obama is that both candidates want their supporters to vote. Both presidential candidates have spent months and millions of dollars on the campaign trail to earn those votes. However, there is one significant problem:

“COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A major voting machine maker has notified its customers in 34 states that a programming error discovered during testing may cause votes to be dropped when they are uploaded to a computer server from the machines’ vote-holding memory cards.”

link: Company admits voting machine error

The voting count may not be valid nor reliable. The admission, at this late juncture, that the reported results may be inaccurate should initiate major reviews of electronic voting and tabulation. This speaks to the need of a ‘paper trail’ to verify the electronic tabulations.

The American people had a sampling of what consequences of vote counting chaos in one election, involving one state. Imaging the turmoil if that voting disorder resulted in disputes in more than half the states in the nation. It would be pandemonium of epic proportions.

Catherine Forsythe