Rich Abbruzzese, a spokesman for Martin O'Malley, who will be sworn in as governor of Maryland on Jan. 17, said O'Malley has been reviewing e-voting issues with officials of the outgoing administration of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.

Abbruzzese said a workgroup has been charged with looking at election issues during the transition. "Their job is to come up with some recommendations for the governor-elect and the lieutenant governor-elect," Abbruzzese said.

Through a spokesman, Linda Lamone, administrator of the Maryland State Board of Elections, declined to comment on plans to revive the effort to require an e-voting paper trail.

Lillie Coney, coordinator for the National Committee for Voting Integrity, a project of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, called voter-verifiable paper trails "the most secure way to audit an election and the most secure way to recover from [voting machine] failures."

"Maryland has been trying since 2002 to get it right with their voting systems," Coney said. "This is good news because that's where we are with the technology."