Paper Ballot Has Md.'s, Va.'s Vote

Paper ballots, which are fed into an optical scan machine that reads them, can help lines move much more quickly because many voters can fill them out at once, officials say. Fairfax has already purchased optical scan machines to back up its touch screens. And on Election Day, elections officers will urge people to vote with paper ballots, Suleman said.

"If voters want to go off in a corner with a clipboard, they can," he said. Otherwise, they'd have to wait for an electronic machine to open up.

During in-person absentee voting in Arlington County, General Registrar Linda Lindberg tried to steer voters toward paper ballots to keep lines moving. But they were "overwhelmingly choosing the machines," she said. "That worries me a little bit about Election Day."

In Maryland, Linda H. Lamone, administrator of the State Board of Elections, has made her preference for touch-screen machines clear, saying in the past that she has "complete faith in the system" and that the machines are "fabulous."

But last year, the General Assembly voted unanimously to discard the touch-screen machines and go to paper ballots by 2010.

It won't be cheap.

The $65 million for the touch-screen machines -- the cost for hardware alone; maintenance costs could add millions more -- was financed through the state Treasurer's Office. While the state continues to pay for the electronic system, switching to paper ballots could cost as much as $40 million by 2011, according to the legislation.

"It makes a person scratch their head and wonder what's going on," said Willis, the former secretary of state. "It's not logical."

But proponents of paper ballots say it's worth it, especially given the fact that the current system doesn't have a voter-verifiable paper trail that can be counted manually in a disputed election.

Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) supported the legislation because "he wanted a way to manually go back and verify the votes," said spokesman Shaun Adamec. "We couldn't go back and do a manual recount now. We don't have the tools to do that."