Count votes carefully

I am one voter who is grateful that California's Secretary of State Debra Bowen has required local election officials to count primary votes carefully.

Even if it takes a long time to count old-style paper ballots, it's vital that we have full confidence in our election results. In a democracy every vote must count. And that means that every vote must be counted. Whatever our party affiliation may be, we all lose when the results of an election are disputed. There's simply no way to repeat a flawed election when there are technical malfunctions or arbitrary counting.

That's the hard lesson we all learned in Florida in 2000. In a democracy, every vote must count, and that means that every vote must be counted.

Florida in 2000 taught us that election results lack legitimacy when they're marred by flawed ballots, broken voting technology or arbitrary counting.

All Californians lose in a disputed election regardless of their political affiliation.

Democracy requires public faith in the election process.

Debra Bowen is keeping her campaign promises, and she has a mandate to ensure election integrity.

Many of the delays in this election are unavoidable since they will be caused by large numbers of absentee ballots being returned at the precinct on the day of the election, not the decertification of electronic voting equipment.

It's more important to count our votes accurately than to count them quickly. Daryl B. Goldstein Camarillo