The Washington Post
September 5,2002



Accurate, Easy Voting Is Goal of Computers

Four Counties to Use  Touch-Screen Ballots

By Colleen Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 5,  2002; Page PG03

Gone are the days of punch cards and tab voting machines for 42 percent
of Maryland's registered voters.

Beginning with Tuesday's primary, voters in Prince George's, Montgomery,
Allegany and Dorchester counties will stick a plastic card into a machine
resembling an automated teller, touch the names of candidates and push
the green "cast ballot" button.

Election officials are hoping it will make voting clean and easy.

"Someone said, 'It's just like my microwave,' " said Catherine O. Davis,
Allegany's election director. "Someone else said, 'I've just gotten a new
electric stove that's digital.' It's reminding them of other machines
they've used. It's being accepted even better than I had anticipated."

Election officials have spent several months traveling to local
festivals, organizations and stores to showcase the new AccuVote-TS
system, manufactured by Global/Diebold Election Systems. They said voter
response has been overwhelming positive.

The touch-screen ballots are the Maryland General Assembly's response to
the Florida vote count controversy that stalled results from the 2000
presidential election for weeks. Last year, the legislature authorized
state election officials to acquire and install an updated system that
would make voting uniform statewide by 2006. Only those four counties
with the most outdated systems will have the new one in place for the
fall elections, at a cost of about $15 million split by the state and
counties, said Linda Lamone, state elections administrator.

Voters in those counties will receive a card encoded specifically for
their precinct and political party when they check in at the judges'
table. When the card is inserted into the machine, a ballot appears on
the touch screen. The voter touches a candidate's name or the box beside
it, and the machine records the selection.

Before the ballot is submitted, voters can review their decisions.

"People love that," said Montgomery election director Margaret A.
Jurgensen, whose staff has held demonstrations for more than 70,000
people since March.

Election officials said the new technology's advantages include its
large, clear print -- in both English and Spanish in Montgomery and
Prince George's -- and a safeguard against people voting for more
candidates than allowed. The screen lights up to alert voters if they've
skipped an office.

The machines also feature an audio ballot, which will allow the
illiterate and the blind to vote unassisted for the first time in
Maryland, officials said.

Blind voters have been particularly receptive to the change, Davis said.
At one demonstration in Allegany, a blind woman explained to Davis that
her husband has always had to help her vote.

"Now I can vote for someone he doesn't like," she told Davis.

The 327 machines between Allegany and Dorchester counties have been
tested only during mock elections and presentations. Dorchester election
director Donna E. Rahe said that some candidates there are concerned that
voters' apprehension about the new technology might keep them away from
polling places but that she is confident the machines will run smoothly
on Election Day.

The electronic ballots were used in the spring in municipal, school board
and special elections in Prince George's and Montgomery, the state's two
largest jurisdictions. No problems occurred in Prince George's. In
Montgomery, where leaders complained last year that the state was moving
forward too quickly with untested technology, there were some rough spots
during the pilot tests.

Jurgensen said those problems had nothing to do with the machinery but
refused to describe the actual glitches. "We've worked through those
events," she said.

Robin Downs, Prince George's election director, cautioned that lines may
move a little slower at the polls, even though the four counties now have
twice as many voting machines. The touch-screen machines don't show the
entire ballot at once, so voters have to work through a progression of
pages.

Some candidates and election officials still worry about voters' comfort
level. Jurgensen said judges have been carefully trained and will be
available at polling sites to answer questions. State election officials
set up a Web site, www.mdvotes.org, where people can practice voting with
a simulation of the new system, and local officials were to mail a user's
guide to all voters before the primary.


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