Diebold Admits Vote Software Used in Maryland Primaries Did Not Meet Fed Standards
Greg Palast and Ben Cohen join in delivering Maryland voters’ petitions protesting irregularites to Gov. Ehrlich.

by Linda Schade, Co-Director, TrueVote Maryland. August 3, 2004

Diebold Election Systems, Inc. has admitted that the electronic voting software used in the March 2004 Maryland Primary Election was not federally qualified. Maryland law requires that, prior to certification by the State Board of Elections, voting systems and any modifications to them must comply with applicable federal qualification standards.

Nevertheless, Maryland’s November election will feature Diebold’s voting machines statewide.

Representatives from voter advocacy groups, including TrueVoteMD.org, Democracy for America, and VerifiedVoting.org, delivered petitions from thousands of citizens to Governor Ehrlich’s office on July 13, calling for the Board of Elections to require computer voting machines to produce voter-verifiable paper ballots. They were joined by investigative reporter Greg Palast, voting rights activist (and ice cream magnate) Ben Cohen, several Maryland legislators, and Teresa Dudley, the Green Party candidate for U.S. Congress in Maryland’s 4th district.

The Governor’s office would not accept the actual petitions until they were screened for anthrax.

Included with the petitions was a letter calling for the resignation of Linda Lamone, Maryland’s State Administrator of Elections, who opposes paper audit trails and who certified the use of the federally unqualified Diebold machines in the state primary.

Diebold admitted the machines were unqualified in an official report to Alameda County, California election officials, which touts Diebold's use of the GEMS version 1.18.19 in the Maryland primaries: “[T]he State of Maryland successfully utilized GEMS 1.18.19 in their March Primary Election in their 22-county roll-out of touchscreens.” The report elsewhere acknowledges, however, that the software was not federally qualified even as of the date of the report, April 26, 2004, weeks after the March election.

The Diebold elections software and firmware used in various state primaries has been the subject of considerable controversy. Recently, the California Secretary of State issued a very critical report on Diebold's performance in that state’s March 2004 primaries, and decertified Diebold machines in four California counties. That office asked the Attorney General to launch a criminal investigation into Diebold's practices after finding that the company misled state regulators and installed uncertified software and equipment in 17 California counties.

The event in Annapolis was part of a nationwide "Computer Ate My Vote" Day of Action day of action, coordinated by Cohen’s organization, TrueMajority, which is conducting a national campaign to encourage implementation of voter-verifiable paper audit trails in time for the November 2004 election.

Similar rallies occurred simultaneously in 18 states.