Maryland was one of the first states to embrace Diebold. But Maryland voters
and elected officials have grown increasingly disenchanted as evidence has
mounted that the machines cannot be trusted. In 2004, security experts from RABA
Technologies told the state legislature that they had been able to hack into the
machines in a way that would make it possible to steal an election. Senator
Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat, informed the State Board of Elections in 2004 that
voters had complained to her that machines had mysteriously omitted the Senate
race.
The Maryland House's bill calls for replacing the Diebold machines with
optical scanning machines for this fall's elections. Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr.,
once a Diebold supporter, has said he'll sign the bill if the State Senate
agrees. Optical scanning machines would be a vast improvement. Voters using them
fill out paper ballots, which are scanned electronically. Those ballots are a
permanent record that can (and should) be used to double-check the machine
results. Although time is short, Maryland should be able to get optical scanning
machines operating by the fall. Even though the Board of Elections has been
resisting the proposal, that should not stop the General Assembly and the
governor from fighting for machines that voters will trust.
The Maryland House voted days after Texas held an election with the sort of
disturbing electronic voting glitches that have by now become common. In Tarrant
County, as many as 100,000 extra votes appeared on the machines — election
officials insisted that they knew which ones to eliminate to make the results
correct. In a hotly contested Congressional race in another part of the state,
results were delayed by programming errors in the machines used in two crucial
counties.
Many states have passed laws requiring paper records for electronic voting.
What is happening in Maryland is important, because not a single member of the
House stood behind the once popular Diebold machines. It is just the latest
indication that common sense is starting to prevail in the battle over
electronic voting.
