A public forum on electronic voting will be held at the Poulsbo Public Library on Thurs., Oct. 7, at 7 p.m., which will aim to answer a critical question on the minds of many voters since the 2000 election fiasco in Florida: Is electronic voting safe and reliable?

Speakers on the panel include Kitsap County Elections Manager Dolores Gilmore; Doug Pibel, a contributing editor for YES! Magazine who has published numerous articles on electronic voting; and John Gideon, cofounder of VotersUnite!, a nonpartisan national organization dedicated to promoting fair and accurate elections. Gideon has testified before both Houses of the Washington State Legislature.

The free event is sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Bainbridge Island and North Kitsap, and the Kitsap Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Bremerton.

In July, voters in 19 states took to the streets in a “Computer Ate My Vote” rally to show their concern about electronic voting machines. The crowds mobilized included technology professionals and computer scientists from some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions. There is growing recognition that current electronic voting machines and software are vulnerable to glitches, hackers and outright rigging of results, with no way to recount in a close election.

Although it is too late to alter the voting process for the coming November election, electronic voting raises serious questions in the minds of many voters. Washington voters are less concerned about state and local elections because 70 percent use absentee ballots.

Washington expects to have electronic voting machines online by 2006, but Secretary of State Sam Reed promises that they will include a voter verified paper audit trail. Washington voters worry nevertheless that questionable results from other states could cloud the outcome of the national election, as they did in 2000.

“We must act now to ensure that our voting systems produce accurate and verifiable results,” says John Gideon. “Some states plan to use machines that will not allow voters to verify their choices. This means that any flaws in the machine or software will never be caught – and no recount will be possible.”

Aviel Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, warns that the use of computers puts elections at the mercy of a few companies that make the machines. “The threat is that the vendors are in a position to make the election come out any way they want, and it’s virtually undetectable,” he says.

For information, call (360) 779-1430 or go to www.uufbink.org.