NEW ERA

Published on June 28th an editorial favoring paper ballots and a column entitled
"F&M's presentation on rail yard fails to win over skeptics."

WATCHDOG: New Era earned double kudos!

First, an Editorial entitled "Paper ballots on comeback trail" states "Following Florida's presidential election fiasco in 2000, many states abandoned punch cards - once used by nearly a third of the electorate - and mechanical level machines in favor of electronic touch-screen voting systems." It then explains how electronic voting machines without a paper trail of each vote actually cast often fail (or we would add, sometimes are rigged) and there is no possible way to check on what took place.

What the article is not clear about is that the voting machines which former commissioners Pete Shaub and Dick Shellenberger insisted on buying in disregard to Molly Henderson's objection have no verifiable paper trail. The sooner that the County gets rid of these second hand "bargains," the better!

Second, the New Era carried an article by columnist Carol Petersen that properly challenges for lack of candidness and fair play the presentation by F&M College last week to home owners in the vicinity of the proposed (and almost certain) relocation of the Norfolk & Southern freight yard.

Samples:

"The two most important issues on a long list of citizen concerns are the potential health risks associated with freight trains and their cargo and the loud impact noise inherent in coupling and uncoupling train cars. Imagine residents' surprise and disappointment when they learned from the engineering firm that those two critical items were 'not within the parameteres given to us by F&M.'"...


"'You just have to take our word for it' that there would be remediation should it be needed, [John Fry] added.' Trust is earned, and without solid answers to their long-standing questions resident are running a little short of trust in F&M."