Voting System

A day after Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. chastised the State Board of Elections, saying that he has no confidence in Maryland's voting system, the state's chief elections administrator told a Senate committee that changing Maryland's voting equipment would be "catastrophic." In a scathing letter to State Board of Elections Chairman Gilles Burger, Ehrlich said he is concerned about security and accuracy risks in the state's electronic voting system. He called on the agency to adopt a voter-verification system, such as a paper receipt, for its touch-screen voting machines.

O'Malley OKs buying new voting system Maryland would scrap its $65 million electronic voting system and replace it with machines that have a paper record under a bill signed yesterday by Gov. Martin O'Malley. The new system, estimated to cost $18 million to $20 million, is aimed at ensuring the integrity of elections and avoiding a repeat of the voting machine problems during last fall's primary. If funding is approved, the machines could be ready for the 2010 election. O'Malley also signed a measure that would allow voters to decide in 2008 whether to allow early voting at a limited number of polling places.

Adding to the chorus of discontent with Maryland's voting system, Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan said yesterday that he will bypass his polling place to vote by absentee ballot - and he suggested that his constituents do the same. Duncan, a Democrat and former candidate for governor whose county experienced severe voting problems during the September primary, said he has no confidence in the leadership of the State Board of Elections to handle the November general election.

A referendum to give all residents over age 18 the right to vote in community association elections in Columbia's Wilde Lake village failed yesterday, ending a costly and labor-intensive campaign that advocates believed would create a more democratic voting system.The proposal was to amend covenants on Wilde Lake's property, which allow one vote for each household, to permit all eligible residents to vote.Residents annually elect five association directors and one representative to the Columbia Council, which oversees Columbia Association operations.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - In the latest blow to Florida's increasingly embattled election system, state and local officials scrambled yesterday to try to salvage election records wiped out during a computer crash in the state's biggest county. Secretary of State Glenda Hood sent an investigator to Miami-Dade County, and county election officials brought in a university consultant to try to figure out what went wrong after published reports yesterday detailed a citizens group audit that said records of the 2002 Democratic primary vote for governor vanished last year.

Former Westminster resident to discuss experiences in Iraq Anna Sophia Bachman, a former Westminster resident, has "traveled a war zone" while helping the underprivileged and working for peace in the Middle East. She will give a firsthand account of her experiences in a lecture, "Travels in a War Zone: Iraq and Palestine" at 11 a.m. tomorrow in the Scott Center theater at Carroll Community College. As an English teacher at Baghdad University and an environmentalist, Bachman has assisted with aid projects to Fallujah, helped a young Iraqi boy through the ravaged Iraqi health care system and helped the poor with housing issues.

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski gained first-hand knowledge yesterday of potential glitches that haunt Maryland's costly and embattled electronic voting system. Working the crowd at the Takoma Park Folk Festival, Mikulski encountered a demonstration of the touch-screen voting system, which gets its first statewide general-election roll-out in less than two months. She decided to give the AccuVote TS manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems a try, with troubling results. On a referendum question that is part of the sample ballot on the machine, Mikulski pressed the screen to vote "no."

An Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge rejected yesterday a challenge to Maryland's new electronic voting system, saying officials had done enough to "ensure each vote is counted and the security and secrecy of the ballots remain intact." Allowing voters the option of casting paper ballots - one of the plaintiffs' top requests - would "cause much confusion and is clearly against the public interest," Judge Joseph P. Manck said in a seven-page ruling. The state elections chief, Linda H. Lamone, hailed the ruling.

The Columbia Council and the unincorporated city's 10 village associations are divided over whether Columbia should institute any type of referendum allowing residents to vote on council decisions.The council debated last night pros and cons of a resolution to allow a nonbinding advisory vote on any matter under the authority of the council, which serves as the Columbia Association's Board of Directors.Under the proposed resolution, a nonbinding vote would be a measure of opinion, but would not change, or substitute for, a council decision.

William Poole, blind since the age of 9, elected not to vote yesterday after deciding that a new technology used to cast ballots in Baltimore County could not protect the secrecy of his vote.Election officials in Towson worked with Mr. Poole for nearly a half-hour on a computerized voting system to find a way for the 38-year-old unemployed actor to vote without jeopardizing his confidentiality. In the end, however, he couldn't be sure of not making a mistake on his own and did not want to tell someone his choices and have that person cast his vote for him."