WASHINGTON - April 15 - he candidates for President on Showtime's reality series "The American Candidate" are a savvy bunch. Like most politicians, they know that at the end of the day the person with the most votes wins, and like too many of today's real-life politicos many of them are willing to let the ends justify the means.

Dal LaMagna, candidate for President on "The American Candidate", founder of the Progressive Government Institute and CEO of the Tweezerman Corporation, isn't your average politician. After learning that his fellow contestants had discovered ways to artificially inflate their number of online voters, LaMagna went to the Showtime producers and suggested that they institute an email collection system that certifies supporters while collecting their email addresses for the candidates to use during their campaigns.

"This experience is supposed to represent the best in American politics," said Candidate LaMagna. "The fact that my fellow contestants have found ways to manipulate the system is troubling to me. Come this November when Americans head to the voting booth to vote in the actual election, many of them will be casting their ballots on computers for the first time. Will that system be as vulnerable to manipulation as this one is?"

LaMagna isn't the only candidate who sees the manipulation of the system as troubling. "I try to believe the best in people and give them the benefit of the doubt, but you've got 15,000 votes in about 5 days, 9000 of them overnight and my friends tell me that a computer program can be used to rack up supporters," said one fellow contestant.

With hanging chads still fresh in the minds of voters following the 2000 Presidential election, Americans have good reason to be wary of new voting systems being instituted in polling places across the country come November. Computerized voting is scheduled to take place in x states, most for the first time. In a deeply divided country where every vote is critical, how can we be certain that computerized voting machines won't be subject to manipulation? Voting electronically leaves no paper trail, and backup systems are questionable. Is America ready for another election with citizens who feel that their votes didn't get counted?

The Progressive Government Institute is a non-partisan, educational organization dedicated to ensuring transparency and accountability in the executive branch of the federal government. We study how our government operates, believing that such a process leads to improvement and progress. We believe that the executive branch must be transparent so that it can be responsive to all Americans. Furthermore, we insist that our President and his advisors by accountable-otherwise, we, the people, are not able to fulfill our constitutional role of judging the direction that the President takes this country. For more information visit us on the web at www.progressivegovernment.org.

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