State should not change to yet another voting system

Friday, March 20, 2009

The Maryland Association of Election Officials would like to take this opportunity to express its opposition to continuing with the purchase of a new voting system at this time.

With new bills being introduced to relax the restrictions and guidelines on which the system can be bought (meaning nothing meets guidelines written now, and would result in Maryland buying old, outdated technology), Maryland is walking down the same path that it walked in 2001 upon purchasing the current system, we are jumping the gun needlessly. Concrete reasons that we should not switch systems now are listed below, and are the consensus of Maryland's Election Officials from all the local boards in the state:

ï The DRE system we have now works. We just completed performing a near-flawless election on these voting units, and our election judges have perfected the operation of these voting units. The state and local boards have spent a lot of time and money on security and accountability with these units, and they were one of the biggest factors in the local boards being able to disseminate lines quickly on Election Day because of their ease of use.

ï We are still paying for these machines. The state still owes approximately $17 million dollars on these machines, which gets spread out into county budgets through the FY14 fiscal cycle. In this economic crunch, burdening the state and local budgets with additional charges for voting equipment on top of the equipment we already owe on just does not make any sense.

ï The U.S. Election Assistance Commission continues to work on current Voluntary Voting System Guidelines expected in Federal Legislation in 2012. Every state will ultimately have to be sure that the system that they currently use at that time meets the new guidelines. What if the system that we purchase now does not meet the new federal guidelines? Since we are paying on the DRE system through FY2014, in this economic crunch, would it be fair to the citizens of Maryland to end up paying for three voting systems concurrently if the system that was purchased did not meet the new Federal guidelines? With the relaxation of the guidelines that we are about to buy new equipment on, this scenario is an unfortunate likelihood.

ï With early voting, using the DRE touchscreens makes sense. With paper, human error is involved in handing out ballots in a polling place, and has been documented in our elections that had paper ballots in years past, when only two different ballot styles were in the polling place. During early voting, some counties will have upwards of 100 different ballot styles in a polling place. With the DRE, there can be no mistake made and the person will always be receiving the correct ballot.

There also is no over-vote on the DRE.  Many votes in elections past were thrown out due to over-votes on paper.

ï More than 60 percent of the voting populations in the State of Maryland, including Montgomery County, Prince George's County, Baltimore city, and others have never used a paper ballot in the polling place. Changing the system now, while trying to implement early voting, could cause big problems for voters trying to cope with too much change in the process.

Once again, for the reasons listed above, I implore you to consider delaying implementation of a new voting system.

We realize that the upcoming election is the election that all of our Maryland Senators and Delegates are on the ballot, and we want to be able to provide the citizens of Maryland with the best, most economical voting experience that we can for you. Thank you in advance.

Guy Mickley, Howard County

The writer is the president of the Maryland Association of Election Officials (MAEO) and deputy director of the Howard County Board of Elections.