Reply #16: Great additional points, calipendence, thanks.

[seafan]

Certainly the trade treaties should be examined again, with strict attention to preservation of all workers' rights and with stringent environmental safeguards.

Kyoto desperately needs the U. S. on board again; it's beyond time we flush the * Administration's
arrogance surrounding this treaty.


Good economic points as well, especially the need to rewrite the Bankruptcy Bill so it will cover those it SHOULD cover... namely, those who lose a job, divorce or suffer catastrophic illness/accident.
Also, Medicare should be re-examined, strengthened and preserved.


About the electronic voting machines, I will always advocate pen and paper ballots over electronics at the point we find ourselves now. My reasoning....

...It will give complete control of counting votes to each County Supervisor;

...It saves millions/billions of dollars;

...Voting/tallying are not held hostage to power outages, *humidity*, machines not put into service for whatever reason, leading to shortages of equipment and long voter lines and work time lost;

...It would cut out all wrangling with Secretary of State "political appointees" such as SOS Cobb in Florida. This *was* an elected position until Jeb made it his appointed position after Katherine Harris left. Voting should not be controlled by hostile takeover. For example, we need just look at what Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho is going through with Ms. Cobb and Diebold/ES&S/Sequoia right now.

...It would cut out permanently the monumental problems with secret, proprietary software battles and corrupted memory cards. These problems are nowhere near being resolved, and much more damage to our country will be in the pipeline unless we say we've had enough.

...No special training for poll workers is necessary.

...With Sharpie pen and a paper ballot, there are no chads, no "paper trail". There is just an accurate hand-count in the first place. Hooray for simplicity. And we have fairness, accurate count and ballot security, all addressed at the local precinct levels.


IMHO, this is the single most critical issue we face before this November.


Democrats in DC, I hope you are listening.