WYPR’s Senior News Analyst Fraser Smith discusses the movement to a more paper-based voting system with reporter Karen Hosler on this edition of “Inside Maryland Politics.”   The General Assembly passed legislation during the 2007 Session to move in this direction and the implementation was delayed in the 2010 Session for fiscal reasons.  Should this system move forward, the first time it will be used is for the Presidential Primary in February 2012.

Ms.  Hosler states that the current system worked well this primary, except for modem problems and the slowness in reading memory cards.  She alluded that this system is more accurate than an optical scan system that would provide for a paper ballot.  In discussions with elections officials, she has found that the new system will be expensive and  require quite a bit of training for election judges.

Mr. Smith and Ms. Hosler both suggest that maybe the State’s budget problem will “save us from doing this.”

Previous coverage of the optical scan voting system can be found on the MACo blog, Conduit Street.