Touchpad voting machines further erode voter trust
My thanks to the Times Union Editorial Board for its editorial "No vote of confidence," Aug. 4, about touchpad voting machines. Voting has become increasingly detached from the voter over the last decades. With the approval of the machines from ExpressVote XL by the state Board of Elections, we now have a mockery of a paper trail, with votes printed on easily erased thermal paper using barcodes instead of human-readable text. True manual audits are now impossible. In effect, we are being asked to trust black boxes made by a private company with our most sacred democratic process, flying squarely in the face of an everincreasing distrust in our voting systems. Instead of making the process more opaque, the elections board should be making it more transparent. When we can see clearly into the black box voting machine, one of two things will happen: We will see an honest count, feel good, and sleep soundly; or we will see cancer, surgically remove it, and again sleep soundly.
The article “Fight looms over dental care bill,” Aug. 13, on the shameful inadequacy of dental services available under Medicaid could have mentioned another part of the solution: the New York Health Act. The health act would create public health insurance covering all New Yorkers for all necessary medical care, including dental care. The cost of filling a tooth or doing a cleaning is the same, regardless of the patient’s income. Reimbursement (adjusted for regional costof-doing-business) for any necessary dental service would be the same for every state resident under the act.
This is not to say that dentist-extenders, called dental therapists in the article, are a bad thing. I’m afraid that we medical professionals have priced ourselves into obsolescence paying for our education and lifestyles. Well-trained medical-professional-extenders are becoming the norm and generally do a good job (as the research on dentist-extenders shows).
The bottom line to remember is that dental care, just like medical care, is critical to a healthy life. Our present cost structures are unsustainable for both dental and medical care. Limiting access to health care for a segment of our society (the uninsured and those with low incomes) is both unjust and foolish.
The New York Health Act is a real solution. individuals throughout the continuum of their care is necessary to ensure that New Yorkers are able to access the care they need.