"Voting debate makes odd bedfellows: Ehrlich, leftists ally in fight against Diebold machines"

"ANNAPOLIS — Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has joined forces with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard B. Dean, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Sierra Club, Progressive Maryland and a group of Takoma Park activists.

The Republican governor has not become a member of the Democratic Party’s left wing that he often demonizes, but he has jumped on their bandwagon by blasting the state’s election system — particularly electronic voting machines.

‘‘It’s an interesting coalition of Montgomery County good government types and Republicans raising not just serious issues but irrefutable questions about the integrity of the process,” Ehrlich said in an interview.

At the heart of TrueVoteMD’s argument is that the state should require Diebold to install the technology to produce a ‘‘paper trail” for voters to take with them after their ballots are cast to ensure the integrity of the election process.

Ehrlich turned up the volume in questioning the state’s voting system this week with a letter to the state Board of Elections supporting a bill that was passed 137-0 by the House on Thursday to lease optical scan voting machines to replace the touch-screen Diebold machines for $12 million to $16 million.

TrueVoteMD’s coalition consists of many organizations, such as the ACLU, that are almost never among Ehrlich’s allies.

‘‘We’ve said from the beginning that this is not a partisan issue ... whether you’re on the left or on the right, you want your candidate to have a fair shot,” said Schade, who ran as a Green Party candidate for the House of Delegates in Montgomery County in 2002.

Ehrlich’s lack of confidence in the state’s electronic voting system is proof ‘‘that the legitimacy of the Diebold system is in tatters,” Schade said.

Also, many of Howard Dean’s ‘‘Deaniacs” have taken on the paper trail issue as their call to arms.

‘‘It’s quite safe to say that there are a lot of people across the political spectrum who are passionate about having a voter verified paper trail for this year,” Schade said."-from today's story in The Gazette (MD).