Reply #2: Pennsylvania: Citizens Respond To Allegations That Lawsuit Delayed Voting

[stillcool]

By VotePA
February 28, 2006

As lead plaintiff in the suit, Mary Beth Kuznik expressed dismay that an honest effort made by citizens to preserve the rights of all Pennsylvanians under the state Constitution was being blamed for a delay in buying voting machines and a potential loss of Help America Vote Act funding.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” said Kuznik, who is also founder of the election integrity alliance VotePA. “Regardless of whether or not our suit was filed, Pennsylvania has been way behind in getting voting systems certified. Counties could have held the referendum required by our state Constitution and still have met the HAVA deadline, but many held off on their decision because they were waiting until well into the new year for more machines to come out.”

Kuznik said that her group and others are calling upon Secretary Cortés and Governor Rendell take the next step to make sure that votes are protected by pushing for hearings and ultimate passage of SB 977 / HB 2000.
SB 977 and its identical House version HB 2000 would provide that all voting systems in the state produce a paper record or ballot allowing voters to verify that their choices are being recorded as cast, with an audit of 5% of the precincts chosen at random in each election. The bills, proposed by Senator Joe Conti (R-Bucks) and Representative Dan Frankel (D-Allegheny) have co-sponsorship of over one-fourth of their respective houses, but are delayed in the State Government committees and have been unable to move to either the public hearings called for by the Governor’s Task Force on Election Reform, or to a floor vote in the General Assembly.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=981&Itemid=113