Senate considers requiring paper receipts for voter
By Gretchen Parker, Associated Press
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Legislation that would require electronic voting machines to produce paper records of ballots is pending in the Senate, while House leadership and Gov. Robert Ehrlich's administration agree it may be too late to make any changes in time for the November presidential election.

Maryland's March primaries were the first state elections to use all touch-screen machines — 16,000 of them in the state's 1,787 precincts.

The new equipment came at a cost of $55 million to the state. Adding machines that would print paper receipts, which voters could use to verify their ballots before they leave polling places, could cost up to $21 million, according to an analysis by legislative aides.

The bill requires the governor, not the local governments, to come up with the millions.

"We need to go ahead now. The more we delay, the less likely it is we can implement it for November," said Sen. Andrew Harris, R-Baltimore County, a co-sponsor of the legislation.

"Computer experts have said this can be done in a matter of weeks. The technology is not that complicated," said Harris, who introduced the bill after a report on the machines found them vulnerable to fraud.

The legislature hired Columbia-based RABA Technologies to study the safety of computer voting systems, and the firm reported in January that the machines — made by Diebold Election Systems of Ohio — are accurate and secure.

House lawmakers, however, say it's impossible to install the new technology by the Nov. 2 general election. Their version of the bill calls for a paper trail in time for the 2006 election.

Ehrlich's administration agrees that seven months is not enough time. Plus, the Federal Elections Commission has not yet come up with standards for how the records should be printed, said Joe Getty, Ehrlich's director of policy.

"We don't want to jump out of the gate and do something that's going to be very expensive and have to go back and correct it," Getty said.

David Bear, spokesman for Diebold, wouldn't speculate on how long it would take to implement a system with paper records, but he agreed that federal standards are needed before the changes are made.

"What you're talking about is a new piece of equipment that we don't even know what it is yet. We haven't defined it yet," said Bear, who also wouldn't speculate on the cost of outfitting 16,000 machines with printers.

Of the $15 million to $21 million figure, he said: "I don't know where that number came from."

The Diebold machines have built-in printers, which are used to print a paper audit of the election at its conclusion. Bear says it's technologically possible for the machines to be modified to provide a piece of paper showing someone had voted, though it has yet to be done.

As an alternative, Harris suggests the legislation could temporarily require only one voting machine per precinct to print paper receipts.

That would bring the cost down to about $2 million, he estimates, and would address concerns that the machines are vulnerable to systematic fraud. If pollsters can check machine's paper record against a computer count to make sure they jibe, they could be alerted if someone had hacked into the system and ordered a certain number of votes be changed, Harris said.