Paper Trail Bill scheduled for Senate Vote Tomorrow

Written by: Robert Lanza on Apr 5, 2006 9:28 PM EDT

Linked to groups: Democracy for Montgomery County

All: SB 713 is scheduled to reach the Senate Floor tomorrow.

The revised version of Senate Bill SB 713 is unacceptable. The revised bill passed by Senator Hollinger's committee should be better known as the Diebold Contract Protection Act of 2006. The revised bill would allow the State Board to continue to use defective and insecure Diebold equipment and would not provide for meaningful audits or recounts of election results.

TrueVoteMD urges the Senate to pass a bill that contains the exact same language as House Bill HB 244, which passed the House Unanimously earlier this month, NOT the version of SB 713 that was passed by Senator Hollinger's Committee this past week.

The revised SB 713 would allow the State Board to immediately purchase Diebold TSX touchscreen machines with defective Diebold printers that cannot be relied upon for use in manual audits and recounts.

The revised SB 713 would not require the paper ballot to be the official ballot of record. It would allow the State Board of Elections to decide whether to accept the Diebold touchscreen-produced ballots or the paper ballots as the official ballot if a discrepancy occurred during an audit or recount. Yes, in the event of a discrepancy the State Board of Elections would decide which results to use to determine who won the election.

In addition, there is nothing in the revised bill that would require the use of "manual or "hand-counted" audits or recounts. Diebold could scan the paper record with yet another insecure computer system and call that an audit.

TrueVoteMD opposes the revised bill SB 713 in its current form. Senators should instead insist that the Senate bill be amended back to its original version, which mirrored House bill HB 244 that passed that body unanimously, along with a requirement to use an optical scan voting system for the 2006 elections. Otherwise there will be NO paper trail for the 2006 elections.

TrueVoteMD is standing firm for the best voting system for Maryland. If the Senate passes the exact version that the House passed, the Governor has promised to sign it and has already put full funding for it in the state budget. If not we'll be using free fall voting again this fall. No paper trail, no recounts, no audits.

Action Item: It is imperative that you call your Senator and tell them that the current version of SB 713 is unacceptable and that they should amend it to use the same language HB 244 as passed by the House of Delegates.

Senators need to support the following:

* The paper ballot must be THE official ballot of record in manual audits and recounts.

* Paper ballots must be printed on durable paper with permanent ink on separate pieces of paper, so they can reliably be used for manual "hand-eye" audits and recounts.

* Strong audit language from the original HB 244 bill with 5% random audits, informing the public of audit results, and listing actions taken when the audit results don't add up.

* Transparent recounts: the public viewing of the process and expedient posting of information.

Thank you for working to protect our democracy.


Robert Lanza
TrueVoteMD.org

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Location: Montgomery County, MD 20850