High Court Tosses Complaint
Against Touch-Screen Voting
Machines
By STACY KAPER
Capital News Service
ANNAPOLIS - There will be no paper ballots or audits for
Maryland voters in the November election, Maryland's high court
ruled Tuesday.
The Maryland Court of Appeals rejected the appeal of a group of
voters who claimed the state's $55 million touch-screen voting
machines are not secure enough.
The plaintiffs, part of a citizen's organization called
TrueVoteMD, say voting machines need to be able to produce a
paper record to avoid the kind of problems occurring during the
contentious 2000 presidential election, when vote counts and
recounts in Florida held up the final decision for weeks.
Ryan Phair, the plaintiffs' attorney, argued during an hourlong
hearing before the court Tuesday that the State Board of
Elections has not done enough to ensure that the Diebold AccuVote
TS machines meet the required security standards for elections.
One of the main problems, Phair said, is that voters cannot be
certain their votes are being accurately recorded by the
machines. In the event of a recount, the machines will merely
reprint what they initially recorded, he said.
However an attorney representing the National Federation of
Blind Voters, Daniel Goldstein, called the TrueVoteMD members'
case, "All passion and no proof." Recounting paper ballots, he
said, does not improve the integrity of the intended vote cast on
those ballots.
A real blow to the plaintiffs' case came when the court's seven
judges pointed out that all the security studies voters cited had
also found that voting with paper ballots was the least accurate
voting method.
"The bottom line is that there is no way for voters to verify or
audit their votes," said former Prince George's County Democratic
Delegate Joan Pitkin. "I don't think that the court or the State
Board of Elections is in tune with the voters and I think the
voters are going to wake up and be very unhappy about this."
The appeals judges questioned whether the appeal should even
have been heard in court and indicated that the General Assembly
may have to weigh in on voting systems in the future.
Phair echoed that, saying his case is now focused on making
improvements before elections in 2006. He is using state
documents that could not be included in time for this case,
including an internal report commissioned by the Maryland
Association of Election Officials in May called "Lessons
Learned," which points out numerous problems with training,
communication and contracting for the voting machines.
Members of TrueVoteMD say the state board has tried to hide the
findings of this report from the public.
The State Board of Elections and its attorney, Michael Berman
would not comment on the case.
Barbara Fisher, president of the election officials association,
called "Lessons Learned" an "in-house" document designed to
improve the use of the voting machines. She said although state
officials have not formally responded to the report, the
situation has improved.
The Court of Appeals decision follows a weekend incident in
which U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland, reportedly had
difficulty using one of the voting machines in a mock election at
a festival in Takoma Park.
On Tuesday, Montgomery County Circuit Judge D. Warren Donohue
issued a restraining order to force the return of the disputed
machine after a local election judge took it for testing.
Mikulski has added her name to proposed federal legislation that
seeks a mandatory paper record for elections.