TrueVoteMD Urges Maryland to “rapidly put in place a paper record for independent recounts”
The Carter-Baker Commission joined a growing chorus today urging a paper trail for electronic voting. Twenty-six states have passed laws requiring a paper record with electronic voting. New Hampshire has banned e-voting. Maryland is one of only two states that votes paperless.

“Not requiring a paper record for e-voting is becoming an indefensible position.  Maryland needs to join the rest of the country and recognize that the only way to have transparent, independent vote counts is to provide a paper record that is verified by the voter,” said Linda Schade, Director of TrueVoteMD.org. 

For three years TrueVoteMD.org has been urging a paper record for e-voting.  The groups efforts began when security reviews by Johns Hopkins University showed votes could be changed on the machines.  Since then two other reports have also found security vulnerabilities.  More recently machine failures have come to light in Maryland.  The Montgomery County IT report found that up to 12% of their machines had problems in the last election.  Problems included machines freezing and crashing in the midst of votes, error messages on the machines, blank cards that record the votes and machines being unable to start. In Baltimore County there were such widespread problems that it took four days for the results to be reported and it was not until four months after the election that the Baltimore County reports were made official.  Even today, there continue to be inconsistencies between the State and Baltimore County reports on the numbers of votes case – a discrepancy of 27,000 votes.

“With serious security and performance problems we cannot trust the Diebold machines to count the vote accurately.  It is critical for the state to require a paper record for e-voting in time for the 2006 elections.  The Gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races in particular are expected to be close and every legislative seat in the Maryland legislature.  Voters need to be sure their votes are counted accurately and that cannot be done on the current Diebold machines,” said Schade.

TrueVoteMD is a non-partisan organization working for transparent and verifiable elections in Maryland.