Here it is, Super Tuesday -- voters in ten states cast their primary ballots. It could turn out to be a big day for one of the Democratic contenders, but it will certainly be a big day for electronic voting. Voters in California, Georgia, and Maryland will cast their votes with a touch-screen. After the 2000 election Congress authorized funds for states to upgrade to electronic voting, but it's still a controversial technology.

In Maryland, officials are trying to shore up confidence in the new machines. Measures include tamper-proof adhesive tape to prevent anyone from fiddling with their programming or electronics. Linda Lamone is the state's top election official.

LAMONE: It's called "tamper tape" and it indicates on the tape itself if anyone has tried to intrude into the equipment. And it's placed across the door that leads to the area where the memory card is stored.

FUTURE TENSE: How confident are you right now that the system will yield accurate results?

LAMONE: I am completely confident, in fact both of the studies that were done on the Diebold equipment for Maryland said that they counted 100 percent accurately.

FUTURE TENSE: Do you consider this any kind of test run, or as far as you're concerned, this is the real thing, is the testing over with?

LAMONE: The testing is over with. This equipment has been tested at least four times in preparation for this election by different people, and it's had two risk analyses done on it. It was used in four counties in the 2002 gubernatorial election without any problems whatsoever, and it's been used in about 22 municipal or special local elections since then.

FUTURE TENSE: There are groups in a few places in the country that are using electronic voting, and I think there is a group in Maryland, that have encouraged people to avoid the electronic voting machines and use absentee ballots instead. Have you seen any surge in absentee ballots because of that?

LAMONE: No.

FUTURE TENSE: And what's been your response to these lingering concerns about the technology?

LAMONE: They're basically saying that the only way to ensure trustworthy elections is for the equipment to be able to produce a paper ballot that the voter can then examine to make sure it matches what they see on the screen. Well, of course if you have a rogue programmer that's smart enough to program the equipment to record a different result than what the person sees on the screen, that same programmer will make sure that what is printed on the paper matches what's on the screen and not what's recorded. So I think it creates a false sense of security. And if you look at the administrative and logistical problems of having printers in polling places, in Maryland we have 16,000 voting units. That means 16,000 printers that are capable of running from 7:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night, with enough ink and paper to accommodate that. And what happens when a printer jams?

FUTURE TENSE: There has been a lot of focus on the potential disadvantages, but what are the advantages of going electronic? How is this going to make things easier for your office and better for office?

LAMONE: Absolutely. Security is certainly an issue and one that we take seriously, but the real issue is how many voters are not going to be disenfranchised from the voting process due to the advantages of electronic voting. It provides a secret ballot to the blind and visually impaired for the first time in this state. It's much more flexible as far as language needs are concerned. We're offering the ballot in Spanish in two of our larger jurisdictions. It eliminates over-voting completely, which was a huge problem for some jurisdictions in the 2000 presidential election. And it greatly reduces under-voting. We have something here that is intuitive to use, the majority of the voters absolutely love it. And you need to have a balance between security and putting into place new barriers that could disenfranchise voters. We
We're confident, we like the equipment. Most of our voters like the equipment, and we think we're going to have a great election.

That's Linda Lamone, administrator of elections for the state of Maryland.