Election challenge had valid basis

I am writing to take issue with your editorial Jan. 9 titled "Un-American challenge."

In my eyes, the challenge of the Ohio electoral vote by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., was the most American thing any U.S. senator has done in a long time.

It is an undisputed fact, according to records from Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's own office, that he delivered more machines per precinct in Republican areas and fewer machines per precinct in Democratic areas, compared to the election in 2000.

This resulted in lines of 15 minutes long on election day in Republican precincts, and lines of up to 10 hours to vote in Democratic precincts. This constitutes blatant, premeditated voter suppression.

You say in your editorial, "no election is perfect." That's a cop-out. There is no excuse for the greatest democracy in the world to have 20 percent of its citizens believe that fraud affected the outcome of its most important election, as recent polls have shown. We know what we need to do to have more perfect elections. Congress just hasn't considered it a priority.

Now, after the fiasco in Florida in 2000, and the disaster in Ohio in 2004, it is time to fix our election process. "We the people" deserve to have confidence that the person inaugurated on Jan. 20 is, in fact, the choice of the people. How can we attempt to export democracy to Iraq and the Middle East, when the purity of our own democracy is in question?

This is not a partisan issue. Democrats, Republicans, independents - all Americans who love their country should want to have the cleanest, fairest, most transparent elections possible. Urge your congressman and senators to support national standards for federal elections. We need voting machines we can trust and audit. We need a verifiable paper trail. We must have faith in our system if democracy is to survive.

Sierra Wilson, Evans