(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

There have been almost 40 data breaches in Maryland since January which have been reported only due to a new breach notification law in Maryland.

I'm betting the story would be similar for other states if they had similar laws.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

You may recall that Maryland was considering passing some laws requiring paper voting. According to the TrueVoteMD newsletter:

In the closing hours of the 2007 legislative session, a four-year effort to require paper ballots for Maryland's voting system passed the House and the Senate unanimously. ... The final bill ensures that any new voting system certified for use must include a voter verified paper ballot. The bill requires an optically scan-able paper ballot marked by hand or with the help of a ballot-marking device.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

According to the newsletter from TrueVoteMD, a consumer rights group in maryland that opposes the auditless e-voting, there are two bills in the state senate that will require paper trails and adequate records of votes for Maryland.

Our most fundamental right as American citizens is being denied in Maryland. I went to the polls to vote today and explained that I wanted to vote, but would only use a paper ballot. While the check-in people suggested a "provisional ballot", the supervisor nixed that and showed me this nice large sign.

Barred from voting in Maryland

Why did I insist on a paper ballot? Perhaps it's because of the Princeton University Study proving the lousy security of this system (with instructional video).

For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities — a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab.

Or it could be because of this study done by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

All of the most commonly purchased electronic voting systems have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities. All three systems are equally vulnerable to an attack involving the insertion of corrupt software or other software attack programs designed to take over a voting machine.

If you protest the e-voting, be prepared to give up your right to vote.

But that aside, forget studies and look at our own state's history:

As reported by the Baltimore Sun many poll workers did not show up for work this morning and when they did they many had no idea how to operate new voting technology called "e-poll books" which are a necessary part of the voting process in Maryland and many other Diebold states. The workers were not trained to use that technology because Diebold did not provide the technology to the state until it was too late to properly train the pollworkers.

It's clear that the e-voting system is unstable and NOT READY. The accounting and security, both hardware and software is heavily suspect and it's much safer to rely on the traditional method of voting rather than on the video-poker-like machines they forced on us. But if you try, you may be barred from voting as I was.