Seems Headed to Get it Wrong Again, However, by Calling for 'Paper Trails'
State Election Director Linda Lamone Still Not Yet Fired...
By Brad Friedman on 12/11/2006, 7:02pm PT  
Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller said last week that he plans to support a bill requiring that e-voting machines provide a paper trail, just months after opposing a similar measure.

...begins a report today in ComputerWorld. Miller, of course, is the one who allowed a bill calling for paper ballots to die in the Democratic Maryland Senate just prior to the '06 Election even after both MD's Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich and the Democratic House approved the measure (by a 137 to 0 vote!)

Miller seems on course to screw it all up again for the state by calling for paper "trails" (versus ballots) in Maryland, the first state, along with Georgia, where Diebold was allowed their initial mis-adventure in e-voting by blanketing the state with shitty, unreliable, hackable, inaccurate paperless touch-screen voting machines as early as 2002. Then, of course, both Diebold and the state's Democratic Election Director, Linda Lamone, went about lying and covering up the fact that the machines didn't work and were hopelessly vulnerable.

Miller attempted to spin his way beyond his pre-election failure to the voters and towards not being so horribly wrong with this incomprehensible statement as quoted by CW...

“This is a concern about the future,” Miller said. “We haven’t had problems [with e-voting] in Maryland. Our optical machines have worked fine.” He contended that problems in recent elections can be traced to human error.

What the hell he's talking about, we can't even begin to imagine. "Haven't had problems in MD"?! He's kidding, we presume. "Our optical machines have worked"?! Huh? The state uses DRE/touch-screens everywhere other than for absentee ballots. Of course, the "human error" part, we get. That's the same old discredited Diebold (and apologists) laugh-line we've been chortling at for months.

Lou Dobbs put it this way last September: "I think it is human error. The error of buying and purchasing those Diebold machines, certainly at least in Maryland."

Speaking of Diebold apologists and laugh-lines, the disgraceful and discredited Lamone who, incredibly, has not yet either resigned or been fired, is now assigning a spokesperson to not speak for her to CW:

Through a spokesman, Linda Lamone, administrator of the Maryland State Board of Elections, declined to comment on plans to revive the effort to require an e-voting paper trail.

We suppose this is preferable to her going to the bother of committing to interviews only to rip her mic off in the middle and storm out of the room. But still, here she has the chance to support paper trails (as opposed to ballots) to assure that Maryland's elections will continue to be as screwed up and unreliable as she's made them since 2002, for years to come!

Have we mentioned this lately?...

American needs a paper BALLOT for every vote cast.

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