E-Voting Group Sues Maryland Elections Board

By Robert MacMillan
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 12, 2004; 5:54 PM

A Maryland group seeking paper trails on touch-screen voting machines today sued the State Board of Elections to win the right to monitor polling places on Election Day.

The lawsuit, filed at the U.S. District Court in Baltimore, also seeks the right for TrueVoteMD members to warn voters about possible problems with touch-screen voting machines while standing within 100 feet of Maryland polling places, traditionally a forbidden zone for candidates, campaigns and other groups. 
 TrueVoteMD co-founder Linda Schade, a Takoma Park resident, said the group will "invite people to fill out a complaint form" if they report problems with the machines. TrueVoteMD is considering whether to file legal challenges to Maryland's election results if any voter complaints arise on Election Day.

Linda Lamone, the state's elections administrator, said allowing the group's members to talk to voters in that zone "would be improper."

"We felt that allowing them to do that would just create chaos and intimidate the voters," Lamone said.

Schade said that "We are not trying to influence how anyone votes. We are there to document the problems that voters experience."

She said TrueVoteMD received permission from the state attorney general's office on Oct. 5 to place hundreds of poll watchers inside voting locations throughout the state on Election Day. Poll watchers normally are limited to campaign representatives or groups that have issues on the ballots that day, but the attorney general's office made an exception to avoid litigation, said Assistant Attorney General Judith A. Armold.

The office revoked the agreement after discovering that TrueVoteMD members and volunteers planned to sue for the right to gather within 100 feet of the polling places to speak out against touch-screen voting.

Schade said exit pollers are allowed to talk to voters in that space, and that the law only forbids "campaigning and electioneering."

Armold declined to comment on other groups that would be allowed in that area. "We've always taken a very strict position on what can be done within the 100-foot zone," she said. "Even though it may not be electioneering for a particular person, [it] is not allowed within a 100-foot zone."

Larry S. Gibson, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, said the lawsuit's outcome is uncertain.

Regardless, he said, "why can't they just stand right outside the 100-foot limit?" 
 This is not the first time that Schade has taken legal action against the state's voting system. Maryland's highest court in September upheld a lower court ruling denying an injunction sought by Schade to force the state to equip its more than 16,000 voting machines with printers intended to provide voters with a verifiable paper record in time for the November elections. That case will continue in a lower court, but will not be resolved by Election Day. As a result, nearly all Maryland residents will vote on machines made by Diebold Election Systems Inc.

TrueVoteMD's attempt to place volunteers in the restricted space around polling places is the latest development in Maryland's rocky path to implementing touch-screen voting. Maryland spent $55 million on the Diebold machines , but a 2003 report co-authored by Johns Hopkins University professor Aviel D. Rubin subsequently determined that the machines could be subjected to manipulation by hackers. In addition, a study commissioned by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) and conducted by SAIC Corp. revealed security problems, as did a study commissioned by the state Department of Legislative Services, conducted by Columbia-based RABA Technologies LLC.

State elections officials and Ehrlich insist that the machines are safe, and Lamone has been one of the most-quoted defenders of the accuracy and reliability of the Diebold machines. She said the machines have been secured against infiltration after researchers posted their source code on the Internet [when], revealing a variety of technological problems.

Maryland's ongoing controversy is part of a growing awareness of the inherent weaknesses in the U.S. voting system nationwide. Concerns in general about electronic voting have grown especially as political observers predict one of the tightest presidential elections in years.

Many electronic-voting opponents warn that the problems that marred Florida voting systems could be repeated on an even larger scale this year, including in other states that rely heavily on touch-screen voting, such as Georgia. Nevada elections officials also are using nothing but electronic-voting systems, but each machine is outfitted with a printer.

About 6 million area residents will use some kind of "direct recorded electronic" voting technology this year. District of Columbia residents will have their choice between electronic machines and optical-scan machines that record votes on a ScanTron-style ballot and store them electronically. Virginia voters will use a variety of machines because the state leaves the decision in the hands of individual counties and cities.