Suit planned against use of electronic vote machines

A voter advocacy group plans to file a lawsuit today seeking the decertification of all Maryland’s 16,000 electronic voting machines, saying the state needs a paper backup system to ensure the November vote will be free of tampering or technical glitches.

The lawsuit, to be filed in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court, says Maryland’s system violates state law because the machines don’t produce a paper receipt of each vote that can be used verify the electronic results.

Without that paper backup, the group argues, there is no way to know if the touch-screen machines have malfunctioned or if someone has hacked into the electronic system to alter the vote.

“These machines are vulnerable to human error, computer error and fraud,” said plaintiff Linda Schade, a member of the Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland. “We are talking about the system by which we will elect the next president.”

About 50 million registered voters — roughly one-quarter of the national pool — will use touch-screen voting machines in the November general election.

Many states, including Maryland, used the equipment in their recent primaries. Most machines only allow voters to check their votes on the screen, recording their vote on a computer card.

That makes some voters uneasy because they don’t see a physical ballot showing their vote. Some security analysts also say the electronic machines can be tampered with to alter the results.

Legislation that would have required paper receipts died in a Maryland General Assembly conference committee last month.

Linda Lamone, the state’s elections administrator, said the machines likely couldn’t be changed in time for the November election. They can currently print only a full-day tally, not individual ballots. There also aren’t any federal standards for printers, she said, meaning there is no way to certify the system.

Miss Lamone said there were no technical problems with the state’s March primary.

But Miss Schade and her attorney, Ryan Phair, said there is no way to tell whether someone tampered with the vote. They cited a Johns Hopkins University study last year that concluded people could vote multiple times and not be detected because there isn’t a physical record of each vote.

Mr. Phair said if the state can’t introduce a paper trail by the November election, he would rather see the state fall back to its paper ballot and punch-card system.