Urgent: prevent voting fraud in Maryland

Irrespective of your party affiliation, you should be concerned about the laws recently enacted here in Maryland regarding early voting. These laws will encourage and enable voter fraud; in particular the casting of multiple votes by the same individual.

For more information and petition forms, call Tom Roskelly, Chairman of the Marylanders for Fair Elections committee which is sponsoring the petition drive. His phone number is  410-703-2186.

Here's what has happened:

• The Maryland General Assembly passed a law in the 2005 legislative session that would allow early voting (Tuesday through Saturday before election day).

Some have said this is a way to increase the opportunity for people to vote, but the law has also been changed to increase voter access to absentee ballots – a process that DOES have safeguards to ensure one person, one vote. The early vote process does not have those same safeguards.

• In 2006 the legislature passed another bill that allows early voting only in a few handpicked precincts--all of which happen to be Democratic Party strongholds.

Early voting in and of itself is fine, it is the lack of oversight that can lead to voting fraud that is troublesome..

• The laws fail to provide any provision to stop people from voting multiple times in each different early vote location.
• The Legislature provided no plan to keep early vote locations secure, to provide people or funding for security to watch the machines at night, to test the machines to know if they can operate reliably for such an extended period of time, nor to hire the additional poll workers and election judges.
• The Legislature has expressly PROHIBITED poll workers from asking for photo ID.
• Even after it was proven that our current voting machines could be hacked by a computer, the Legislature forbid changes that would provide a paper trail to reduce the possibility of fraud.

The petition is specifically to overturn SB 478 – The Early Voting Law and HB 1368 which specified that the polling places be placed in specifically Democratic strongholds.

For more information and petition forms, call Tom Roskelly, Chairman of the Marylanders for Fair Elections committee which is sponsoring the petition drive. His phone number is  410-703-2186

tags: voter fraud  md  election fraud  maryland  abuse of power  corruption  politics  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit