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H.B. 1368
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VETOES
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As a result of the early voting veto override this past January, Maryland must
implement early voting for the 2006 election cycle. Initially under the law, local
election boards were directed to choose the most geographically and central locations.
Instead, under this bill, the General Assembly unilaterally selected the early voting
polling locations. During the Senate floor debate, it was revealed that certain local
election administrators and advocacy groups had never been consulted on the
placement of these early voting locations. Local election board members and
administrators are the most knowledgeable about these decisions and I am dismayed
that they were not able to voice their opinions and be engaged in the selection process
for early voting locations in their respective jurisdictions.
I am especially disturbed that the Conference Committee appointed by the presiding
officers did not include any members from the Republican Caucus. Excluding the
minority party from participating in decisions concerning the placement of early
voting polling places highlights the highly partisan approach of the General
Assembly's election law manipulations this session. As a result, these locations were
placed in areas heavily populated by Democrats rather than in ones more convenient
or centrally located to all residents.
Next, this bill mandates new restrictions for purging names from the voter
registration rolls. The 2005 report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform,
chaired by U.S. President James Carter and former U.S. Secretary of State James A.
Baker, recommends that states focus efforts on improving voter registration database
management, including the requirement that states take proactive roles to register
voters and cleanse voter rolls. Our election administrators need authority and
flexibility to cleanse the voter registration lists and ensure that our Statewide voter
registration database is in full operation in time for the upcoming elections. This bill
creates artificial restrictions on this process and greatly hinders efforts by our local
election administrators to have a clean and accurate voter registration list. If it is
determined a registered voter has relocated, is deceased or created a fraudulent
registration, that name should be removed from the voter registration database
immediately. So long as local election administrators can verify ineligibility before
removing a voter's name, there should not be a time-prescribed legal impediment to
do so; otherwise we risk increasing the potential for voter fraud. In contrast to the
restrictions created by this bill, the Carter-Baker report suggested that it is more
efficient to resolve voter registration issues prior to the election instead of being
caught in post election court challenges over voter eligibility that delay election
results and allow judges to be the final arbitrator of who won.
I believe that the Maryland General Assembly misplaced its priorities on election
issues during the 2006 session and should have focused efforts on voting system
security instead of this bill. In December 2005, the California Secretary of State
revealed that the memory card source code contained in our Diebold AccuVote-TS
machines has never been tested. This Administration and the General Assembly had
been assured previously by the State Administrator that these voting machines and
its source code had been fully tested. In fact, the risk assessment study conducted by
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) upon which we relied to assure
the public that we have a reliable system was premised upon the false assumption
that federal testing had certified this source code. The recent California studies
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