Paper Ballots Return to Maryland Elections <read>. Once Maryland implements optical scan, there will only be five states left without a voter verified paper record for voting. Apparently Maryland is very very slow at starting what they mandate.
The Maryland Board of Elections’ state administrator, Linda Lamone, said the coming year will be spent preparing polling center volunteers and educating voters.
Lamone said the General Assembly was given the go-ahead for the paper system in 2007, but only received funding for the switch last year. The cost to lease the machines alone is roughly $25 million, but that does not include additional costs such as storage and transportation of the units before and on Election Day.
She said one of the reasons for the mandate was that lawmakers “felt that it was safer” to have a paper record of every vote cast.
Lamone is know for opposing optical scan. We recall a Connecticut study in 2006 by TrueVoteCT’s Michael Fisher that demonstrated the total costs of acquiring and using optical scan at about half the comparable costs of DRE (Touch Screen) voting systems now in use in Maryland – Optical scanners cost a lot more, but you need only one and a backup to a polling place, you only have to program two, and the last longer.
We point out the obvious that Lamone must have had to transport and store the larger number of DREs as well.
