RE: Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland

["Mcgrath, Bob________PTC_MKT" <bob.mcgrath@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The other incredible thing about this is that SAIC is about to get into the
business of manufacturing voting machines themselves!  Talk about a conflict
of interest.  Part of Diebold's criticism of the SAIC evaluation is due to
this, I believe.

-----Original Message-----
From: Neal McBurnett [mailto:neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 9:04 AM
To: bcv
Subject: Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland


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.