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Ehrlich voting proposal decried |
Changing of system called 'catastrophic'
By Kelly Brewington
Sun reporter
Originally published February 17, 2006
A day after Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. chastised the
State Board of Elections, saying that he has no confidence in
Maryland's voting system, the state's chief elections administrator
told a Senate committee that changing Maryland's voting equipment would
be "catastrophic."
In a scathing letter to State Board of Elections Chairman Gilles
Burger, Ehrlich said he is concerned about security and accuracy risks
in the state's electronic voting system. He called on the agency to
adopt a voter-verification system, such as a paper receipt, for its
touch-screen voting machines.
But at a hearing yesterday on a Senate bill that would implement such
technology, Elections Administrator Linda H. Lamone said that doing so
would require decertification of the state's current voting system and
the purchase of machines that she said could not be obtained by the
fall election. The new system would mean added costs and require
voters, judges and observers to be retrained, she said.
"We've already spent a lot of money on the system," she said. "We
would literally be throwing it away. I have confidence in this system.
I have confidence in the ability of my office and the hardworking
specialists in each county to conduct a fair and accurate election in
2006."
Diebold Elections Systems, the Ohio-based manufacturer from which
Maryland purchased on its statewide automated-tellerlike machines for
$55 million in 2003, lauded Maryland's system as the most accurate in
the country.
Mark Radke, director of Diebold's elections systems, said an
optical-scan system, which some advocates would like to see
implemented, is two to three times as prone to errors as the
touch-screen machines.
"The system has proven to be secure," he said. "It's disturbing to see this kind of false information being distributed."
Radke met with House lawmakers in a closed-door meeting in Annapolis
yesterday to discuss their concerns about Diebold's machines in other
states and the viability of a paper trail for the state's touch-screen
machines.
Radke also said an example in which a computer expert successfully
hacked into a Diebold system in Leon County, Fla., was akin to "giving
the keys to someone's house and asking them not to steal anything."
Maryland's memory cards, which store the recorded votes, are
equipped with encryption devices and digital signatures that prevent
tampering, he said.
Del. Jon S. Cardin, a Baltimore County Democrat, said the Diebold representatives quelled the fears of some lawmakers.
"We wanted to make sure Diebold gave us the full story about what
we have," said Cardin, who added that he left the meeting feeling
confident in the state's system.
Democratic leadership continued to criticize Ehrlich yesterday,
sending a letter to Lamone that called the governor's demand for voting
paper trails last-minute and inconsistent with his previous opinions.
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael
E. Busch pointed to a 2003 statement by Ehrlich in which he discussed
the results of an independent study done on the state's Diebold system.
Ehrlich said then that with additional tests and security
procedures, "the Diebold machine and source code, if operated properly,
can contribute to one of the safest and most secure election systems
available."
Busch and Miller said Ehrlich's recent complaints to Lamone could
"unjustifiably undermine public confidence in the integrity of the
state election process."
Miller had earlier condemned Ehrlich's letter as election-year
politics, while Sen. Paula C. Hollinger, who sponsored the Senate bill
on paper trails, blamed Ehrlich for failing to allocate money in the
budget for such a system.
In his letter, Ehrlich expressed deep concerns about the
reliability and security of the machines in light of recent reports on
problems of Diebold technology elsewhere. He blamed the state agency
that runs elections for poor management, inaccurate cost estimates and
being partisan. He asked that the elections board respond to his
concerns by Feb 28.
Ehrlich also called on lawmakers to postpone plans to offer early
voting until 2008 because he was concerned that having the polls open
days before Election Day would leave the Diebold systems susceptible to
fraud. Democrats said they didn't agree and planned to move forward
with early voting.
Meanwhile, Diebold maintained yesterday that the systems have been
used for early voting the past three years in Los Angeles County with
no problems.
But advocates of voting system reform said they are not convinced that
the machines are reliable, insisting that the system used in Maryland
is error-prone and riddled with security flaws.
Linda Schade, founder of TrueVote MD, said Baltimore County's 2004
primary election experienced problems in some precincts where she said
votes were not recorded.
"Frankly, I don't know how Baltimore County recorded vote totals," she said.
Sen. James Brochin, a Democrat from Baltimore County, appeared alarmed with the claims.
"I just want to get through the 2006 election without problems,"
he said. "I worry about a catastrophe in 2006 ... where nobody knows if
we've had a secure election or not."
Diebold officials said the concerns in Baltimore County involved
human error, not mechanical problems, and said that no votes were lost
in that election.
Support of the state's current election system was bolstered by a
report presented yesterday by Donald F. Norris, director of the
Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The report polled 800 voters on their opinions of touch-screen technology and showed "no crisis of confidence" in the system.
John T. Willis, who served as Maryland secretary of state from
1995 to 2003 and has spoken widely on voting issues, said that after 25
years of experience overseeing voting systems he's confident that the
Diebold system is accurate and secure. He blamed politics for muddying
the issue.
"This shows, in my opinion, why the election process needs to be independent from the political process," he said.
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