By Melissa J. Brachfeld

Montgomery County Sentinel Staff Writer

In what appears to be a victory for Maryland voters, the Federal Election Assistance Commission issued new guidelines last Tuesday saying that voting machines should have verifiable paper trails that are reliable and secure. Those guidelines could be used by many states that require electronic voting machines that create a paper trail. Security of software and other computer technology used in voting machines should also be assured.

Last Monday, Walden O'Dell stepped down as the CEO of Diebold just as shareholders filed securities fraud litigation against Diebold after stock prices plummeted. The most recent Diebold quarterly report confessed to shareholders that earnings and share value was down due to citizen litigation and security and reliability concerns.

Diebold is the controversial voting machine manufacturing corporation, from whom Maryland purchased 22,000 voting machines for a price-tag exceeding $100 million.

"We have outsourced our election system to what could be the next Enron," said Alex Zeese, organizer for TrueVoteMD. "How can we expect Diebold to fulfill their contract obligations with so many other problems facing the company?"

"Paperless voting like Maryland's Diebold system should be rejected," said Linda Schade, Executive Director of TrueVoteMD. "We should return to the tried-and-true precinct-based optical scan systems used by 30 percent of voters in the 2004 election. In fact, many Maryland counties used optical scan before Diebold was imposed on them. It is time for the legislature to act."

David Bear, press communications officer for Diebold, insisted that the Diebold voting machines have been successfully used in several elections in many states, including Maryland.

"There have been hundreds of successful elections over the years using touch screen systems without voter receipts," he said. "That said, voter receipts are just one more redundant measure that can be used to ensure the accuracy of capturing voter intent."

Bear went on to note that a study was done by Caltech/Massachusetts Institute of Technology analyzing the 2004 presidential election. In comparing the results to the 2000 election, he said, the report concludes that states that switched away from punch card voting significantly lowered the number of residual votes.

"The study concludes that the most improvement occurred when counties/states changed to touch screen systems," Bear said. "The study specifically highlights the significant improvement in Georgia which used equipment from Diebold Election Systems. The switch to optical scan systems produced some improvement, although not as much as with touch screens."