Columbia Flier

December 4, 2003

Bravo for your Nov. 27 editorial expressing support for voter verified paper audit trails with the new electronic voting machines. "Trust, but verify" applies well to this situation. Voters interested in this should visit www.TrueVoteMD.org.

In the related news article, "Howard takes new voting machines for a spin," an official for Diebold, the company that makes the new voting machines, was quoted as saying that when Allegany County did a paper recount, they got the same result.

In fact, it was not really a paper recount because they merely printed out the paper record at the end of the day. Thus, if the electronic count got it wrong and they merely printed out the paper using the same software, they got the same wrong result.

The scary thing about electronic vote counts is that the smoothest election could be the most corrupt, but there will be no independent record to prove it.

The only way to verify correctly is for the voters to see the paper audit trail before they cast their vote. The paper record is made at the time the voter votes, not at the end of the day when the voter is not available to verify that it is accurate.

Kevin Zeese

Silver Spring

The writer is co-founder of the Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland.