Concerning electronic voting machines, I think you need to randomly and without warning seize one of these machines, of the type that does not leave paper trails, and test its vote input compared to its output. There have been many reported inaccuracies in the machines, all interestingly enough in favor of Mr. Bush. I am certainly not implying he is in anyway directly responsible.

But one thing that seems very strange is the amount which the exit polls differed from the actual results, especially in Ohio. Where as in most non-battleground states, the exit polls matched the vote count within 1% this is not the case in the battle ground states. Also, (and this is something I noticed myself, not anything I have just read or seen on TV) in the non-battleground states that were already expected to go blue, Kerry took lead from anywhere from 7 to 15 MORE points than any of the polls predicted, likely due to the record voter turn outs. In battle ground states like Ohio, this trend is absent. Even giving Bush some leeway on that trend in the battle ground states, Kerry still should have come out ahead.

What’s more, Ohio used Diebold voting machines in many areas. These voting machines leave no paper trail. Earlier in the campaign, the Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell, a big GOP fundraiser, actually promised to deliver Ohio to Bush. He regretted having said that later, but the act is a shocking insight into the nature of these machines.

Other inaccuracies in the machine are not limited to, but as reported in the following:

- In Columbus, Ohio, an electronic voting system reported that Bush received 4,258 votes while Kerry received 260 votes in a precinct where records show only 638 voters cast ballots.
- In North Carolina, a machine lost more than 4,500 votes due to a mistaken assumption about the memory capacity of a computer.
- In Youngstown, Ohio, and South Florida, numerous voters complained that when they tried to cast votes for Kerry, the machines instead recorded their votes for Bush.

All in all, more than 30,000 complaints have been gathered from across the country. Many informed individuals believe that the results of the election were tampered. It's crucial that an independent authoritative investigation be undertaken to determine if such inaccuracies could have affected the outcome of the election, which is very possible, considering the thin margins between the two candidates. Bush won Ohio by 3%.Unfortunately, even actual elections yield a three percent error due to the same old hanging chad situations. Just that could make the difference in battleground states such as Ohio. Tainted voting machines would only tip the scales further.

I urge you to join your colleagues, Representatives Conyers, Scott, Nadler, Watt, Wexler and Holt, in calling on the Government Accountability Office to immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of electronic voting machines.

Please let me know how you intend to proceed on this issue.
Sincerely,