Brooklyn Parent For Peace Chooses Paper Ballots, Optical Scanners

Brooklyn Parents For Peace urges the Board of Elections in the City of New York to keep our elections in local bipartisan hands by selecting Paper Ballots with Optical Scanners (PBOS) as our new election equipment when we replace our lever voting machines.

PBOS election systems consist of Paper Ballots, precinct-based Optical Scanners, and accessible ballot-markers for voters with disabilities and language minorities.

PBOS is cost-effective and will leave more of our resources for local programs, which may otherwise have to be cut due to lack of funds.

PBOS is more easily managed by our Board of Elections' technical staff, which ensures reasonable cost and bipartisan control.

Voters and poll workers can easily handle elections with paper ballots and the accessible ballot-markers that are available for voters with disabilities and minority languages.

Brooklyn Parents For Peace condemns the use of electronic voting systems with secret software, as well as vendors' claims that their proprietary trade secret rights override the public's right to know how our election equipment is working.

PBOS systems have proven to be reliable rather than plagued with glitches.

Paper ballots are easily recounted.

PBOS will encourage voter confidence and the participation of citizens as election observers, but electronic voting will discourage voters and observers, since the legal ballot will be invisible, and no one will be able to observe meaningfully.

Brooklyn Parents For Peace knows that no computer system is secure, since computer systems of the Department of Defense, the FBI, and major financial institutions have been compromised.

Brooklyn Parents For Peace believes that low-tech PBOS is the better choice for our city.