Md. moving to optical scan voting

Friday, Oct. 31, 2008

The chief concern is that no known voting system conforms to the most recent accessibility requirements for people with disabilities, deputy elections administrator Ross Goldstein said.

The federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires that at least one optical-scan voting station in each precinct be equipped to allow voters who lack fine motor control or the use of their hands to submit their ballots automatically.

While such equipment is available, state law requires those machines to be certified to the latest accessibility guidelines, which were drafted in 2005 — and no machines meet that standard, officials said.

Still, elections administrator Linda H. Lamone told the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee last month that the agency expects to seek bids for the new voting system within the next few months.

"There may be something out there that we don't know about," she said.

If no offers are received, elections officials could ask legislators to strike the certification language from the law, Goldstein said.

The General Assembly approved the switch to optical-scan machines in 2007 after major snafus with touch-screen devices during the 2006 primary.