Ethics panel to scrutinize Md. lobbyist

By David Nitkin
Sunspot.net, Maryland
September 26, 2003

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. asked the State Ethics Commission Friday to examine the relationships of a well-known Annapolis lobbyist after learning that he represents competing interests in the debate over whether Maryland should buy costly new touch-screen voting machines.

Top Ehrlich aides said they did not learn until this week that Gilbert J. Genn, who was registered to lobby on behalf of Diebold Election Systems, the manufacturer of the electronic voting machines, was also authorized to represent Science Applications International Corp., hired by Ehrlich to determine whether the voting system is secure enough to use

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The examination by California-based SAIC revealed serious security flaws in Maryland's voting system, but state officials determined the problems could be fixed before the March primary election and decided to proceed with the purchase and installation of $55.6 million worth of Diebold touch-screen technology.

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Genn, a former Democratic delegate from Montgomery County, said all of his recent work on the voting-machine issue has been on behalf of Diebold, which paid him $67,182 in the past year, making the company his top client, records show. Genn earned $213,000 overall from lobbying activities during this year's legislative session.

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James Browning, executive director of Common Cause/Maryland, said he uncovered Genn's connections when researching Diebold and SAIC weeks ago. Browning said he's troubled by the appearance of connections between the companies, but that their significance is "not clear-cut."

The research also revealed that Diebold and SAIC are members of the Information Technology Association of America's Information Security Committee, which according to a recent article in the Akron Beacon Journal has begun an effort to improve the public image of electronic voting.

Complicating the picture, he also learned that Bill Owens, a former SAIC president, sits on the board of VoteHere, a company that competes with Diebold in the electronic-voting market.

"There are not many degrees of separation between these voting machine companies," Browning said. "There can be no virgin birth here. Only insiders will know how the software works."
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State officials say they withheld the information to avoid providing a "roadmap" for hackers to disrupt election results.

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