Experimental data are presented for the unwinding of the helical cholesteric structure in the presence of an applied electric field. Homeotropic surface anchoring conditions are known to reduce the magnitude of the critical unwinding voltage which depends on helical pitch and cell thickness. The experiments are unique in that the pitch is varied continuously at constant cell thickness rather than changing thickness at constant pitch. This is accomplished by employing cholesteric mixtures in which the inverse pitch changes linearly with temperature in the nematic compensation region.