Appeal to be Heard September 14th Voters to Rally for Paper Trail

September 13, 2004

The Maryland Court of Appeals has agreed to hear oral arguments in Linda Schade et al vs. Linda Lamone et al, a  lawsuit by voters and elected officials which challenges the legality and integrity of the Diebold touch screen voting system deployed across the state.  Due to the urgency of the upcoming Presidential race, the Court of Appeals required legal briefs to be submitted by September 10th (see TrueVoteMD.org for full brief and circuit court transcript) and will hear oral arguments on September 14th at 9am.

"As an elected official, I understand the importance of voter confidence in the election process," commented Senator Andrew Harris (R). "As a citizen of a democracy, I feel that counting every vote in a transparent process is a sacred duty. I believe Maryland's voting system fails on both counts and will seek to have residents in my district given the choice of voting on paper ballots until we can resolve the issues of our electronic voting machines."

"Electronic voting has rightly been called 'Jim Crow in Cyberspace'," said Kwame Abayomi (D), plaintiff and a Baltimore City Councilman for nine years. "Maryland must move to protect the voting rights of its citizens and ensure that every vote is counted."

Plaintiff and Takoma Park City Councilman for 17 years Marc Elrich (D), also commented: "The issue is not whether the machines are reliable in the sense of whether they can physically break down, because that is something that can be remedied. The problem is that the machines can work perfectly and either through human error, or human manipulation produce results that differ from the way votes were actually cast. There is a real potential for abuse here and the machines can be programmed so as to make such abuse invisible. We shouldn't trust our elections which are the core of our democracy to a system that can't be verified." Councilman Elrich sponsored a resolution for voter-verified paper audit trails for city residents early this year (see resolution on TrueVoteMD.org).

Location of Hearing:

Voters are assembling outside the courthouse with posters in support of a paper trail beginning at 8:30am.

TrueVote MD
www.TrueVoteMD.org · 7711 Garland Ave., Takoma Park, MD 20912 ·
301-270-6150