Don't really agree with this approach

Would the writer's advice be the best way to challenge Hollinger on this important issue? Normally, a congressional forum would not address state legislative issues, especially given that the other candidates might not be as familiar.

Is the idea to embarrass or provoke Sen. Hollinger (truthfully now). Do you really think she is going to respond positively to an orchestrated attack. Do you think her staff doesn't read this blog?

In a seven candidate DFA forum she attended last week, she candidly discussed how she reacted to consituents that employed counter productive tactics. She also discussed in private the reasons behind her problems with Optiscan.

Has anyone sat down with her in private to talk this over? She is more than willing to.

Just be aware there is more than one way to skin a cat, and the best way is what eventually gets the job done. Bridges that were burned last year on this issue have largely been mended it appears. Let's not repeat the mistake again. And if we do, let's not do it in the name of DFA or DFM.

Clarification

I agree John...someone needs to talk with Hollinger one on one. I will note that what Robert has not made clear in his posting is that the 'we' he's referring to is TrueVoteMD, not Democracy for Maryland.

Senator Hollinger's Statements

All: I am basing Senator Hollinger's opposition to HB 244 on her public statements to the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun made after HB 244 passed the House of Delegates 137-0. TrueVoters have spoken with her privately and she reiterated her support for the "5 percent" paper trail option for 2006 that she introduced in her public statements in the Post and Sun. As to the candidate's forum, Ben Cardin is a cosponsor of Federal legislation in the House of Representatives to mandate a paper trail nationwide. We are interested in finding out whether Congresswoman Hollinger, if elected, would also be a cosponsor of National paper trail bill given her apparent strong opposition to a paper trail bill that passed the Maryland House of Delegates 137-0, and we are prepared to ask the same question of all of the candidates attending the forum. VVPAT is a NATIONAL issue as well as a state issue. Senator Hollinger just happens to be in a position to block VVPAT in Maryland. We certainly don't want her to be in position to block VVPAT nationally. If you have other avenues to convince Senator Hollinger to get behind HB 244 rather than promote Diebold, please start using them this week. Time is short.

Thanks...

Senator Hollinger's Statements II

All: The objective of attending the candidate's forum is certainly not to embarass Senator Hollinger, but to convince her that proposing to provide paper trail for 5 percent of the votes in the 2006 election, at a cost of "only" $5 million, as she suggested in her statements in the Post and Sun articles, is not an acceptable solution. Not only does this proposal provide nothing substantive for the 2006 election, but that rate it would cost another $100 million to outfit the entire state with paper trail for the 2008 election, where a state-wide opscan system would cost maybe 20 percent of that. And Senator Hollinger's proposal would still leave Maryland with the insecure and unreliable Diebold electronic voting machines. Senator Hollinger's difficulties with opscan systems are legitimate but are solvable by careful design and operation of the opscan system, a system that many states use. But the well-documented security and reliability problems with Diebold's electronic voting machines are not solvable and far exceed any vulnerabilities of opscan systems. TrueVoteMD presented documentation to Senator Hollinger's committee that in the November 2004 election thousands of votes cast on Diebold machines in Baltimore County went unrecorded and uncounted. Despite Diebold's statements there is NO guarantee that this won't happen again in 2006. Proposing to put paper trail on only 5 percent of the voting machines doesn't even begin to address this issue. So yes, the objective is to convince Senator Hollinger to get behind HB 244 and provide paper trail for ALL the votes for 2006.

Sen. Hollinger and the paper trail legislation

I am not certain that Senator Hollinger's position on this bill, including the amendment for the lease of OptiScans for 2006, has really been clarified. I have reason to believe she is still thoughtfully considering options...and may well end up supporting the very bill we are all hoping she will support. I truly believe she wants to do "the right thing" for the voters of Maryland and suspect she will be much more receptive to people who approach her with that underlying assumption in mind.

I agree with Robert that this topic is of national relevance and therefore appropriate to candidate forums. Having said that, I am uncomfortable with any strategy that could anger the very person whose support is so desperately needed in this final phase. There's nothing wrong with asking for each candidate's views on the subject of VVPAT...let's just make sure that a PUBLIC FORUM does not take on the feel of a tribunal.