Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland

[Neal McBurnett <neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland has a very nice site:

 http://www.truevotemd.org/

with the text below on the front page.

I've linked to them, currently from the "Questions" page on
our web site.
    http://bcv.booyaka.com/moin.cgi/Questions?action=show

These are the folks mentioned in the Fox news story
that Al forwarded:
   http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,102366,00.html

-Neal


 Protecting Our Votes: A Critical Issue Now for Maryland

Will Your Vote Count in 2004? The foundation of our democracy is the right to vote and a key principle is that every vote counts. In reaction to the 2000 Presidential election in Florida, many states including Maryland are upgrading their voting systems. Unfortunately, Maryland is moving quickly to put in place electronic voting machines that make it impossible to safeguard the integrity of your vote - electronic voting machines that are not designed with an independent recount capacity - paper or otherwise. Take Action now to protect your vote!

Numerous reports have found Diebold machines and other computer voting systems vulnerable to error and tampering. In spite of the machine failures, the state moved forward on the Diebold acquisition, signing a contract and committing $55 million in public funds. So great was public concern that Maryland Governor Ehrlich commissioned a special report in August by a national computer software company, SAIC, on the security of Diebold's system. The 200-page SAIC report (PDF document - 1.24 MB) confirmed numerous failings, including the lack of tampering and fraud protection and the lack of capacity for recount. However, SAIC recommended that our state go ahead with the large investment of tax dollars in the Diebold machines, with some software improvements. There is still no planned capacity for recounts or vote verification.

Leading national computer professionals and security experts have stated clearly that any computer voting system cannot be made completely secure. They have formally recommended that any electronic system have a verifiable paper audit trail as the only way voters can have confidence that their vote has been recorded correctly each time, and that recounts and spot checks are possible. Alarmingly, these recommendations have not been incorporated in the Maryland system.

On this site we give you all of the information you need to understand the issue and the tools you need to become an effective advocate to protect the right to vote. If you have ideas on how we can improve this Web site or better advocate for a solution to this problem please contact us.