It?s the time of year for talk of resurrection and rebirth, and legislation to establish a voter-verified paper ballot that was buried last week in the Maryland Senate was brought back to life Thursday.
The revived bill mandates the use of paper ballots that can be optically scanned for the 2010 election, in addition to any use of computer technology to record votes.
“We?re born again,” said Senate Majority Leader Edward Kasemeyer, lead sponsor on the bill sponsored by three-fourths of the senators. The normally laid-back Kasemeyer was royally ticked last week when the Education, Health and Environmental Matters Committee brought out the legislation largely gutted of some of its key provisions for a voter-verified paper trail.
Kasemeyer disgustedly moved to have the bill sent back to committee, which worked on the measure to make it more acceptable to sponsors and supporters.
“There?s a lot of consensus now,” said Sen. Roy Dyson, D-St. Mary?s, the committee?s vice chair.
The legislation arose out of continuing doubts over the reliability of electronic voting machines used for several elections in Maryland to record and tabulate ballot choices.
Maryland Election Integrity, a coalition of advocates for paper ballots including the American Civil Liberties Union and Common Cause, were not thrilled with all the provisions of the revised bill, but urged its adoption.
“This technology has long been recommended by computer scientists and election integrity advocates as the most cost-effective verifiable technology currently available,” the group said in a statement.
State election officials who had purchased the electronic voting machines insisted that they were more accurate and reliable than paper ballots, since they permitted less voter error. But professors of computer security from Johns Hopkins and Princeton universities told the legislative hearings this year that there was still potential for vote fraud and other undetectable errors with the computerized balloting.
