National Organizations Weigh In

August 9, 2004

Lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis LLP who represent eight plaintiffs in Linda Schade vs. Linda Lamone and the Maryland State Board of Elections filed petitions with the Maryland Court of Appeals today seeking to force the Elections Board to either fix or decertify the controversial Diebold electronic voting systems as required by Maryland state law.

California, Ohio, and other states have taken similar action recently, largely in response to a series of Maryland-commissioned expert reports that exposed widespread security and reliability problems with the nascent technology.

Ryan Phair, lead attorney from Kirkland & Ellis, said, "The petitions filed today present the Maryland Court of Appeals with perhaps the last and only opportunity to avert the possibility of an electoral train wreck before it actually occurs." Phair added that "the State's position -- that Maryland needs to move forward with an illegal election because it is too late to have a legal one -- is simply indefensible." See www.truevotemd.org/appeal.asp for the Appeal documents.

Linda Schade, plaintiff and Director of TrueVoteMD.org stated, "Across party lines, Maryland voters are demanding a paper trail for this November. It is evident that this case will ultimately be decided by the Maryland Court of Appeals. My hope is that it can be resolved quickly because the election is rapidly approaching and voters are asking -- pleading -- for protection at the polls."

More than a half-dozen national public interest groups, including Electronic Frontier Foundation, Common Cause, American Families United, Verified Voting and many others, have filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs' petitions, indicating the significance of this landmark case in the growing national turmoil over electronic touch screen voting systems. See http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/20040809_MD_Amicus.pdf.

Cindy Cohn of Electronic Frontier Foundation, a national legal expert on e-voting, commented, "Maryland can set an example for the entire nation by showing that it has heard the voters, and wants to respond quickly to their demands for a secure and accurate election in November."

The Maryland case is scheduled for a court-ordered mediation on Tuesday, Aug. 10, with Judge Thieme in the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court.

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