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TrueVoteMD Action Alert: House Bill Moves to Senate! |
March 23, 2007
Dear Paper Trail Supporter:
The House unanimously passed HB18 this week, which would require a
voter-verified paper audit trail system. As amended, the House bill
makes the voting system change effective in time for the 2010 election
season, presuming that the Governor funds the necessary equipment
purchase in his next fiscal budget. Most importantly, HB18 would treat
the paper ballot as the official record of your vote for mandatory
audits and any recounts. It is not a perfect bill, but it is a good
compromise and provides for substantive voter verification, audits, and
recounts. Therefore, we support HB18. Click here to
read the amended bill.
Below is a quick update on Senate bill SB392 and a call to action to
help get HB18 through the Senate before the session ends on April 9th.
Senate Side Update
SB392, sponsored by Senator Kasemeyer, was originally a companion bill
to HB18. New amendments to SB392 proposed have stalled the bill in the
Committee. These amendments, proposed by several members of the Senate
EHEA Committee, gutted nine pages of the original 11-page bill and
substituted it with language that does not require voter verification,
paper, or mandatory audits. If these amendments are accepted in
Committee, SB392 will no longer be a voter-verified paper audit trail
bill and will not require any meaningful changes to our current
paperless voting system. Therefore, we do not support SB392 as it is
currently amended. Therefore, our best course of action now is to show
support for HB18 as it crosses over to the Senate for consideration.
Tell Your Senator HB18 Works!
Every House bill that passes must go to the Senate for its
consideration. HB18 has been assigned to the Senate EHEA Committee; if
they pass it, the bill can go directly to the Senate floor for a vote.
If the Senate passes HB18, the bill can then go directly to the
Governor's desk for his signature. This would bypass the need for a
House-Senate Conference Committee, where the House bill's language
could be weakened to correspond to the proposed amendments to SB392,
which contain no substantive provisions. We need your help in sending
the simple message to the Senate that they should pass HB18.
Contact your Senator!
Please send this simple and straightforward message to your Senator:
pass HB18. Tell your Senator, as well as EHEA Chair Sen. Joan Carter
Conway (D-Dist. 43) and Vice Chair Sen. Roy Dyson (D-Dist. 29), that
all they have to do to pass good voter-verified paper audit trail
legislation this year is pass HB18. Click here
to send this message to your Senator; a copy of the letter will be sent
to Senate President Mike Miller, EHEA Chair Conway and EHEA Vice-Chair
Dyson. Then tell
your friends to do the same. Call your Senator and leave a message.
Within the next 10 days, we must generate thousands of letters and
phone calls to Maryland Senators showing support for HB18 so that we
can ensure that this bill comes out of the Senate Committee and onto
the Senate floor for a vote.
Thank you again for your support of verifiable voting. It is with your
commitment that the political climate for paper audit trail legislation
changed this year, and it is only with your voice that this legislation
will pass.
Sincerely,
Shazia N. Anwar
Director, TrueVoteMD
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