Lack of Confidence in the Voting System

Re “For Some, the Race Remains Far From Over,” Dec. 12: Your article about the presidential election neglects to bring out a key point: We cannot know if there was fraud in this election or any future elections until the system is fundamentally reformed.

One measure that is absolutely essential is to require that all electronic voting machines produce a verifiable paper trail. In the meantime, the major discrepancies between exit polling and voter tallies are good reason to feel uneasy about the fairness of this election, and these doubts cannot be resolved until the raw exit poll data are subject to an independent analysis. Further, it is not simply fringe Internet groups that are raising questions about the validity of the election results. Studies conducted by statisticians at leading universities, including Columbia, Penn and Berkeley, raise serious questions. It is the obligation of a free press to make the public aware of the enormous potential for fraud and the urgent need to correct the vote system.

Pamela J. Bjorkman

La Canada Flintridge

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Thanks for your Dec. 12 story on citizen efforts to investigate the election. I can’t understand, though, why you would hide such an important story all the way on Page A28. It seems to me that an issue as big as the possible theft of a U.S. presidential election (involving questionable practices and overseen by partisan insiders) would merit much more serious handling.

Adrienne Prince

Ojai