Maryland’s Board of Elections put on a demonstration last week of two potential voting systems that will have voters producing paper ballots again for the 2016 Presidential Primary Election. At the University of Baltimore, citizens could test drive the Everyone Counts and ES&S (Elections Systems & Software) universal-voting systems that will produce paper records readable by optical scanners in every precinct. A 2007 Maryland law required the State Board of Elections to have a paper record of each ballot to be used to efficiently for later audits or potential recounts. State election officials insisted the current touch-screen computerized voting was accurate and reliable, and less prone to voter error.
Rebecca Wilson of SAVE our Votes said, “ The problem with the paperless touch screen system [is] you have no way of knowing if anything happens, there is no way to go back and see how the voter intended to vote…”
With paper ballots, “you can recover votes that have been lost, so you then end up with more votes, and more accurate records of the votes,” Wilson said. “Then if you need a recount, you can see how people actually intended to vote. Because in a close race that’s really important, you want people want to have confidence in the system.”
Full Article: MarylandReporter.com | The news site for government and politics in the Free State.