Obviously you have not done your homework on the new ImageCast Voting Machines that Delaware County now uses.

Your statement “The optical scanner is a proprietary secret computer, which even election officials are not allowed to examine” is completely untrue. In fact that whole paragraph is full of untruths and falsehoods.

Our ImageCast Voting Machines will be programmed by Delaware County Voting Technicians, one Democrat and one Republican. This is done on site in our office. We, at the Board of Elections, are the only people with access to this computer! No IT department, no-one else, will be privy to that information! It is a stand-alone system, meaning not connected to any network.

All machines are kept on-site, not in a warehouse. By law, not only will the Delaware County Election Staff be allowed to examine the machines, but all party chairs and any candidates on the ballot are allowed to view the machine before being deployed.

Our technicians do a vast amount of testing of these machines according to New York State Law before being deployed to the poll sites. This testing will find if there are any errors in the programming, and if the ImageCast is tabulating correctly. All results of the testing are retained for two years.

Yes, our ImageCast Voting Machines are tabulators. They are also a voting device for all our disabled voters in our county. (Handicapped is so politically incorrect) And whether we have 1, 100 or 1000 disabled voters in our county they each have the right to vote on the same voting machine that you and I use. That is the whole idea behind the Help America Vote Act of 2002, to insure that no one loses their right to vote.

By New York State Law we are obligated to do a 3% audit at each election. That would be one district of any town in Delaware County. Our office did a complete 100% audit after the September 15, 2009 [primary election]. That was four towns with a total of 22 districts. After the November 3, 2009 General Election, our office conducted an audit on two towns, each containing two districts. This is more than required. Our results of both elections showed that the ImageCast Voting Machines counted all ballots accurately.

Our office sent out flyers inviting the public to view the new ImageCast Voting Machines. We publicized on the radio and the news papers. We held demonstrations in many towns, plus had a machine at the County Fair. Our office is available to the public Monday through Friday if anyone is interested in viewing them. Unfortunately, response to our invitation was extremely low.

We, at the Delaware County Board of Elections, take our jobs very seriously. We work diligently to insure safe, fair, accurate elections to all Delaware County voters.

All we can say about Germany is that we are glad we live in the United States of America.

We feel saddened every time that someone is allowed to put misinformation out to the public like the article that Bev Harris wrote.

- from Paula Schermerhorn and Robin Alger, Deputy Commissioners of Elections

““Voting” machine is actually a misnomer. The machine is essentially a fancy tabulator. Except for a handful of handicapped voters who made their choices on the machine’s ballot-marking device, practically all of us voted on old-fashioned paper ballots that were coded in such a manner that they could be scanned and counted by the machine.”

The optical scanner is a proprietary secret computer, which even election officials are not allowed to examine. This computer behaves according to the coded instructions delivered to it by (a) the factory (b) whatever technician touched it last or (c) whatever IT guy or programmer or person with access to the warehouse put into it. Translation: The public has no idea what formula it uses to “count” your votes.

Germany has banned such systems, deeming them unconstitutional because they conceal the counting process from the public.

There is nothing magic about having a paper ballot if human eyes can’t count it.