Md. Split On Voting Machines
Accuracy Touted As Fraud Feared

By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 29, 2004; Page C01

Maryland voters will move into the machine age Tuesday, casting their votes in the state primary on ATM-like gadgets with ease and efficiency.

At least that's what state election officials are saying, promising the most accurate vote ever.

Others, including activists and even some longtime poll workers, say the machines make things too easy too easy to cheat, to steal an election and get away with it. Some are asking for old-fashioned paper ballots. Others are considering a "vote fast" to protest the machines.

"This is going to be a showdown," said Linda Schade, a member of True Vote Maryland, a group of 1,000 Marylanders opposed to the voting machines.

The opposing camps set an uncomfortable stage for the rollout of the state's new centralized, all-electronic system of voting one of the first in the nation where nearly 17,000 machines will be put in every precinct in the state. The system was designed after hanging chads and outdated technology left the outcome of the 2000 presidential election in Florida and the presidency itself hanging. These machines, officials say, are supposed to increase voter confidence in election results.

Critics fear the machines will do anything but.

State officials say test after test has found the machines to be nearly 100 percent accurate something that the old punch cards and lever machines never were. Critics point to three studies of computer security one by experts at Johns Hopkins University, one requested by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) and one by the General Assembly. Each one found lapses, some of them serious.

One consultant, testifying before lawmakers this year, said that without fixes, buying a book on Amazon.comwould be more secure than voting on these machines.

Linda H. Lamone, administrator of the state Board of Elections, said the state has made many of the recommended fixes "and will spend about $559,000 this fiscal year" on further adjustments. She predicted an accurate, secure vote on Tuesday: "We've taken a whole lot of steps to make sure the system is secure."

The Diebold Election System's AccuVote machines will enable voters in Prince George's and Montgomery counties, where pilot machines debuted in 2002, to request ballots in Spanish. The machines also will give visually impaired voters the ability to put on headphones, hear the ballot and cast their votes in secret for the first time. Voters also can request that print be magnified for easier viewing.

Perhaps the most important feature, Lamone said, is that the devices show voters a summary screen, so they can make sure the machine recorded their vote accurately before pushing the final button. The machines do not allow overvoting, unlike the old punch-card machines.

For months, state election workers have been taking the machines to senior centers and community gatherings for months to help voters familiarize themselves with the new system. All feedback, Lamone said, has been positive.

Some remain unconvinced. "We do not have confidence in the election results produced by these voting machines," Schade said. "We know too much."

Critics such as Schade trust instead the work of a growing number of computer scientists, about 900 at last count, who say the software is poorly designed and the machines can easily be compromised or hacked.

Schade's group is pushing for paper receipts to somehow become part of an electronic system so there would be an independent way to verify an election. They fear a cyber version of dumping ballot boxes in the river, in which a malicious insider could set the software to record votes for one candidate no matter how the vote was cast. Two bills have been introduced in the General Assembly calling for a "voter-verified paper trail" to be attached to the Diebold machines.

The city of Takoma Park passed a resolution recently calling for a paper option. Some activists have requested that they be allowed to cast paper ballots on Tuesday, but Lamone said that would violate state law. Only those voters who do not appear on registration rolls will be allowed to cast paper "provisional" ballots, she said, another change after the 2000 election.

The state will put tape over the bay doors of all machines to prevent anyone from tampering with the hardware or software. Election officials also have beefed up security procedures, causing some election judges to complain that the process is now too complicated.

The new machines call for credit-card-size "smart cards," which election judges activate and voters stick into the machine. With one judge covering six machines, Jaimie "Chick" Manzano, 73, an election judge in Montgomery County, said he fears a computer-savvy voter with fraud on his or her mind easily could "stick a card in three or four times."

Dianne Dickey, 59, has been an election judge for nearly 30 years, but she'll sit out this election. "I felt that if I continued, it would look like I agreed with the system, and I would be a hypocrite," she said. "I don't believe in the system. I don't trust it at all. So I resigned."

The man who helped bring the long-simmering controversy over voting-machine security into the mainstream, Johns Hopkins computer scientist Aviel Rubin, will be an election judge in Reisterstown, Md., on Tuesday. He and other computer scientists were hotly criticized by election officials, who accused them of knowing nothing about voting procedures and how the integrity of elections is protected. Now, Rubin said, he knows.

"I've had a lot of my fears reinforced through this experience," Rubin said. "And now people won't be able to dismiss me out of hand."

Some election workers, he said, seemed overwhelmed by the technology. Instead of each machine having a different lock, a common security measure, Rubin found that one key opened them all.

And that doesn't even begin to address the security problems with the way the software itself was designed, he said. "Since I know how vulnerable these machines are, as an election judge, my goal is to be extra vigilant," Rubin said.