“I believe the [election integrity movement] has gotten larger. It's become more mainstream and people are paying more attention to them. They are an entity that's at the table and has a voice that is listened to.”

The comment above was made by a state senator in Colorado, but the same could be said of TrueVote’s efforts in Maryland. We have been listened to. We have made significant progress. But our work is not done.

The passage of a paper-based voting system in Maryland took us five years. The Maryland change is mirrored across the country where the U.S. will see less reliance on touch-screen systems and less paperless voting in 2008 and 2010.

But, our work is not done in Maryland or nationally.

In Maryland, the primary focus of TrueVoteMD is going to be getting legislation enacted that will require a random audit to test the optical scan count on Election Day. Under the new Maryland law we will have paper ballots marked by the voters and optical scan machines that count the vote. Electronic voting systems have produced result-changing errors through problems with hardware, software, and procedures./1 All machines can make mistakes, sometimes significant ones, the only way to be sure the optical scan count is right is to audit the result and make that a routine part of election procedure. TrueVote is working with allies nationally and locally to develop a mandatory audit system that is effective an ensuring that election results are accurate.

Nationally, more work is needed. While election integrity is making progress on a piecemeal basis in states and counties across the U.S., at a national level reform has been held up by the influence of the corporations that make voting machines and by elections administrators who resist any change. We need to build a national grass roots movement, modeled after the state-level movements, so that we can overcome resistance to reform. Through TrueVote.US we will be doing our part to build this movement.

Thank you for your support in Maryland and nationally; we will continue to call on you to advance our democracy as you are an essential ingredient to our progress.

1. For example, in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, in the June 2006 primary election for County Recorder, the original optical scan count showed challenger Oscar Duran defeating the incumbent, John Sciortino. A hand count showed that Sciortino actually had won handily; the scanners had been misprogrammed. In Napa County, California, after the March 2004 primary, the 1% manual tally discovered that the optical scanners had been miscalibrated and were failing to detect the dye-based ink commonly used in gel pens. The ensuing recount recovered almost 6700 votes (but no outcomes changed).