Dear Delegate:

During the next two months, you will have the opportunity to pass legislation that would finally make our voting system more secure, reliable, transparent and accurate.

Please support Delegate Sheila Hixson’s bill, HB18, with an amendment for disabled voters. HB18 is substantively the same bill she introduced last year and which passed the House unanimously. Del. Hixson’s bill requires our voting system to maintain an independent method to mark our ballot from the machines designated to tabulate our vote. It makes the paper ballot the official record for a mandatory audit and for any recounts. However, HB18 should be amended to conform to Sen. Kasemeyer’s bill SB392 by incorporating Sen. Kasemeyer’s disability language, which adequately ensures that disabled voters continue to vote secretly, independently and have the ability to verify their vote through audio or other means.

Please do not listen to rhetoric claiming we cannot implement this system by 2008. North Carolina passed its voter-verified paper audit trail law in August, 2005, and, after conducting an open-bid for potential vendors, used optical scan machines for their May 2006 Primary. Most recently, the Governor of Florida intends to convert all jurisdictions that use the paperless DREs to an optical scan system in time for the 2008 presidential election season. We must do this now or we will minimize any affect we want to have on the outcome of who will be the next President of the United States.

Nor should you consider a ‘hybrid’ system as a solution. Allowing voters to “choose” between voting on a paperless electronic voting machines or voting on paper ballots that will be fed into optical scan machines later undermines the solution to the security problems of our DREs and treats paper votes cast at the precinct as absentee ballots. Neither of these choices reaffirms our voting system's capabilities, and would most likely result in severely reducing voter confidence in our overall election process. There should only be one secure system for every Maryland voter in use during our next election.

This issue is of the utmost importance for Maryland citizens. Please make the passage of this bill your top priority in the current legislative session.

Sincerely,