State Elections Administrator Linda Lamone has backed off her total opposition to paper balloting in the face of strong pressure from legislators to have a paper trail on electronic voting machines.
At a hearing Thursday before the House Ways and Means Committee, Lamone offered them a compromise in which the state would continue to use the machines in 2007 and 2008, but also give voters the option of using optical scan ballots.
But computer security experts continued to insist that paper ballots were the most secure way to handle voting.
Lamone said she still supported using the current Diebold electronic voting machines because they make it easier for all voters, particularly the visually impaired. She said it would take a year and half to implement any new system, and it would cost at least $35 million to $60 million to implement a paper trail. Changing the system this year “would put the presidential election in jeopardy,” Lamone said.
She objected to a bill that would make paper ballots the official ballotsbecause they are inherently hard to count. “Hand tallying is unreliable, “Lamone said.
She also believed that Congress, which encouraged electronic voting under the Help America Vote Act, and the Elections Assistance Commission would be setting new rules this year that might be difficult to comply with using paper ballots.
She also said that paper ballots would make it more difficult to institute early voting, because in a county such as Prince George?s, there are over 100 different ballot styles.
Another bill before the committee backed by House Speaker Michael Busch proposed a constitutional amendment authorizing early voting. The legislature already has approved a measure to allow for voting to begin a week before the election, but the state?s high court had said that was unconstitutional.
Professors Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University said Lamone and her deputy Ross Goldstein have suggested that electronic systems are being designed to independently verify voting. “These are all ideas that are being explored,” said Rubin, but are not ready for implementation. “Today the best thing is paper.”
