We have grave concerns about voting in our Democracy. We believe the main threat to our Democracy is not currently being addressed.

Paper trails for ballots only matter if an election is close enough to "justify" a recount, and if an honest recount can be accomplished.

The Tabulators can be hacked into in order to create an artificially large difference in votes between candidates. So without a recount, the "paper trail," if it exists remains irrelevent.

If a recount is done, there is no guarantee it will be done openly and honestly (Ohio 2004), so again the paper trail may be irrelevant. Also recounts are costly as was seen this election cycle.

We have to get it right the first time, by addressing the Tabulator and Electronic voting problem. We need to get Electronic voting and hackable Tabulators out of our election system.

Until and unless they can developed with open source code and non partisan verification of their accuracy and security, we can not have faith in a system that relies on electronic voting and Tabulators.

Otherwise we see no point in taking part in any actions to demand a paper trail and/or deal with myriad types of vote fraud and intimidation. If we ONLY take care of all the other problems, we could easily find ourselves wondering again in 2006 and 2008 "what went wrong?"

We will not participate until and unless the Tabulator and Electronic voting problem is first or simultaneously addressed.