David Price: “I want to underscore what others have said, that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) has done a wonderful job…”

“I want to underscore what others have said, that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) has done a wonderful job in pulling this committee together and in taking us all over the country to examine voting practices and possible reforms in various communities. I think we are going to have some very significant results in a relatively short period of time. Everyone in the country, of course, knows about the travesty that occurred in Florida last fall. But what we have learned is that unfortunately, it is not that unusual for people to have their votes not counted accurately, to find that somehow their name has mysteriously dropped off the rolls when they go to vote on election day. There is a range of problems and challenges that we need to deal with to make our democracy work as it needs to work. Certainly the right to vote and to have your vote counted is fundamental to democracy. My particular focus today is going to be on voting equipment, because we know that we need modern equipment to have votes cast accurately and counted accurately and unfortunately there is a great disparity in this country in the kind of equipment that people are using and the kind of equipment that local communities have access to. All too often, there is a correlation between the worst, worn-out, inaccurate equipment and the economic level of that neighborhood and that precinct and that community. That simply is unacceptable.”