Maryland to switch to optical-scan voting machines

That sound you hear is the collective sigh of relief of the voters of Maryland:

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- The state will abandon the touch-screen voting machines that have sparked years of protests and replace the system with devices that permit a manual recount.

Maryland purchased the machines in the wake of the 2000 Florida election. They have been criticized as unreliable and susceptible to tampering.

Gov. Martin O'Malley has proposed $6.8 million to buy optical-scan machines, which can read paper ballots filled in by voters with pencil or pen.

Election reform advocates praised the move, saying voters currently have no guarantee that their ballots would be properly counted by the state's ATM-style machines, which were manufactured by Diebold Inc.

"Our machines can easily be rigged in ways that are undetectable," said Robert Ferraro of SAVE our Votes, a nonpartisan group. "We were anxiously waiting to see if the governor put the money in his budget, and he did, so we are very pleased. Otherwise, we would have been stuck with a paperless system."

Unfortunately, they won't be available until 2012 ....