UPDATE ON BILLS STATUS AFTER THE MARCH 26 SENATE HEARING
Thanks in large part to grass roots pressure, tremendous progress has
been made on ensuring the transition to paper ballots in 2010:
House of Delegates has left the funding in for the transition to paper ballots.
Senate Budget and Taxation Committee has left in the funding for the transition to paper ballots.
House of Delegates has passed HR893 which will solve the disability voting problem by allowing the use of touch screens as an option to paper ballots.
Now, we have a final hurdle - getting theSenate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committeeto support HR893. This bill will give all voters, but especially disabled voters, an option to vote on touch screen voting machines. This is necessary because the bill mandating paper ballots included a provision that required disability equipment certified to the 2005 federal standards. The problem is that while some equipment is the certification process, none has yet been approved. This bill would allow the use of the touch screen as a transition until such equipment is ready.
You can click here to send an email to your senator and all the members of the committee. And, I urge you to call the chairwoman of the committee, Senator Joan Carter Conway, at (410) 841-3145, (301) 858-3145 or 1-800-492-7122, ext. 3145 (toll free). She has the power to decide whether to allow a vote on this bill before the committee.
Testimony, U.S. House Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives
April 18, 2007, By Avi Rubin, Johns Hopkins University, President of Independent Security Evaluators and author of "Brave New Ballot" (2006)
This written testimony was presented at a hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives on April 18, 2007. Dr. Rubin reported that all of the studies assessing the security of the Diebold DRE, found serious security problems. The media covered these studies, and public sentiment began to shift away from the use of these machines. Also, awareness was raised that these machines cannot perform recounts, be audited, or recover from many different kinds of failures.
Senate Bill 392:
Election Law - Voting Systems - Voter-Verified Records
Introduced by Sen. Edward Kasemeyer Hearing was held Feb. 22 by:
Education Health and Environmental Affairs CommitteeThis popular bill, sponsored by 38 of Maryland's 47 senators, was crossfiled with HB 18 (below), which Del. Sheila Hixson reintroduced this session after it passed the House unanimously in 2006.
House Bill 18:
Election Law - Voting Systems - Voter-Verified Records
Introduced by Del. Sheila Hixson Introduced and passed in 2006 as: HB 244/06 - W&M
Hearing was held Feb. 1 by House Ways and Means Committee
As submitted, this is the companion to the Senate bill above, and essentially the same as the bill that passed the House unanimously in 2006, except for a few minor differences in the disability language and the effective date.
