Washington Post

December 14, 2003

The fight to preserve democracy in Maryland is being waged from a sunset pink room on the second floor of an orange house in Takoma Park, where a gray cat named Handsome sleeps soundly on the batik-draped sofa.

The freedom fighters, Linda Schade and Kevin Zeese, pad about the house in their stocking feet and jeans, firing off e-mails and calling state legislators and warning citizens that the new, ATM-like voting machines that are becoming all the rage are, in fact, quite nefarious.

Who's to say that the machines -- Maryland just signed a $56 million contract with Diebold Election Systems to purchase 11,000 of them before the presidential primary -- won't misfire and throw elections? Or worse, be programmed to do so?

Without some kind of receipt, they say, there's no way to verify that a vote cast on the touch screen is the vote that's registered.

"Every other machine Diebold makes has a receipt -- ATMs, cash registers," Zeese said. "It just makes no sense that they wouldn't do the same for voting." Especially since Diebold, they say, just agreed to add a paper trail to touch-screen voting machines in San Diego County for free.

And so, under bright posters of antiwar slogans and pro-farm workers' rights celebrations, the Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland goes about its work.

Most of the heavy lifting is done through Schade and Zeese's Web site -- www.truevotemd.org -- a $4,000 investment they made from their own bank account. And many of their comrades in arms in this new virtual reality of e-mail, conference calls and Internet grass-roots organizing -- the woman out on the Eastern Shore, the Republican up in Carroll County -- they've never seen.

But in just a few weeks, the virtual campaign has started an actual tremor. It may be too early to call it an earthquake, but that's what they're shooting for.

A few months ago, state elections officials assured nervous Montgomery County officials that not only were the Diebold machines safe, but that voters didn't really care much if they weren't.

Now, Schade and Zeese are happy to report, they are proving the officials wrong. More than 600 people have gone to their Web site and sent hundreds of the form letter protests to legislators, election officials and county leaders.

Many join because they're worried, writing on the discussion board about funky experiences with the machines -- "smart" cards that didn't work, computers that crashed, screens that went dark leaving no way of knowing whether the machines counted their votes.

Karen Montgomery, a Democratic state legislator, has introduced a bill requiring all voting machines to produce a paper printout that voters can check before pushing the final button and casting their vote.

"Nobody was worried, because nobody knew about it," said Bob Ferraro, who is part of the core of the group, along with Zeese and Schade and a handful of other activists. Ferraro, who works on the receiving dock at a nearby Giant grocery, wears mud-spattered black pants and brown work boots. In his spare time, he serves as president for the Eyes of Paint Branch, a local environmental group.

Ferraro became concerned after reading that nearly 1,000 computer scientists from across the country -- the ones who make the machines -- warned that the machines' accuracy can't be entirely trusted.

The group got its start last summer after a town hall meeting held by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). Nancy Wallace, a local environmental activist, asked him whether he was concerned about the machines. He said that he was, adding that in June, he had signed on to a bill requiring a voter-verified paper trail.

Wallace invited civic-minded friends to her house, including Zeese, Ferraro and Schade, and the movement was born.

Among them, the activists represent an alphabet soup of causes, from legalized drug use to fighting the proposed intercounty connector. They are mostly Democrats and Greens, but Republicans, they say, want their votes counted, too.

"This is definitely a multi-partisan group," Zeese said.

"Republicans think the Democrats are out to steal votes. The Democrats think the Republicans are out to steal votes. And the Greens know they're both right."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company