E-voteArmed humans on the grassy knoll, AIDS, moon landing, chemtrails, UFOs, CIA mind control, and Waco are just some of the more well-known conspiracies. But what about the re-election of George W. Bush? This cynicism goes beyond political rhetoric and focuses on our ability to participate in a representative democracy. Developed by the ancient Greeks, one of the first voting systems involved throwing bronze discs into barrels. As technology has progressed, advances in voting systems have made a system unacceptable and lacking in accuracy despite public outcry for a verified paper trail. A voting system has four characteristics: accuracy, anonymity, scalability and speed. Current electronic voting machines claim to possess these qualities, but by what standards? Perfection is not reality and human errors are inevitable. Therefore, eliminating controllable errors becomes the highest priority. Each state must take on this task without national standards leading to information technology as a quick fix to a problem. Maryland primarily uses Diebold direct electronic voting...