[Ninong]

Wally O'Dell, the chief executive officer of electronic voting company Diebold, who once famously declared that he would "deliver" Ohio for President Bush has resigned effective immediately!

Just a few days ago reports started circulating on the internet that Diebold may have rigged the voting in Ohio and Georgia:

Concerns about Georgia, Ohio elections

The insider harbors suspicions that Diebold may be involved in tampering with elections through its army of employees and independent contractors. The 2002 gubernatorial election in Georgia raised serious red flags, the source said.

“Shortly before the election, ten days to two weeks, we were told that the date in the machine was malfunctioning,” the source recalled. “So we were told 'Apply this patch in a big rush.’” Later, the Diebold insider learned that the patches were never certified by the state of Georgia, as required by law.

“Also, the clock inside the system was not fixed,” said the insider. “It’s legendary how strange the outcome was; they ended up having the first Republican governor in who knows when and also strange outcomes in other races. I can say that the counties I worked in were heavily Democratic and elected a Republican.”

In Georgia’s 2002 Senate race, for example, nearly 60 percent of the state’s electorate by county switched party allegiances between the primaries and the general election.

The insider’s account corroborates a similar story told by Diebold contractor Rob Behler in an interview with Bev Harris of Black Box Voting.

Harris revealed that a program patch titled “rob-georgia.zip” was left on an unsecured server and downloaded over the Internet by Diebold technicians before loading the unauthorized software onto Georgia voting machines.

“They didn’t even TEST the fixes before they told us to install them,” Behler stated, adding that machines still malfunctioned after patches were installed.

The whistleblower is also skeptical of results from the November 2005 Ohio election, in which 88 percent of voters used touch screens and the outcome on some propositions changed as much as 40 percent from pre-election exit polls.

“Amazing,” the Diebold insider said.

Diebold is headquartered in Ohio. Its chairman Wally O’Dell, a key fundraiser for President Bush, once promised in an invitation to a Republican fundraising dinner to deliver Ohio’s electoral votes for Bush. The staffer said the company has a deep conservative culture.

[Ninong]

Voting machines used in four Central Florida counties might be flawed. There's new evidence that computer hackers could change election results without anyone knowing about it, WESH 2 News reported.

The supervisor of elections in Tallahassee tested voting machines several times over the last several months, and on Monday, his workers were able to hack into a voting machine and change the outcome. He said that same thing might have happened in Volusia County in 2000.

The big controversy revolves around a little black computer card that is smaller than a floppy disk and bigger than a flash drive. The card is inserted into voting machines that scan paper ballots. The card serves as the machine's electronic brain.

But when Ion Sancho, Leon County's Supervisor of Elections, tested the Diebold system and allowed experts to manipulate the card electronically, he could change the outcome of a mock election without leaving any kind of trail. In other words, someone could fix an election and no one would know. "The expert that we used simply programmed it on his laptop in his hotel room," Sancho said.

Sancho began investigating the problem after watching the votes come in during the infamous 2000 presidential election. In Volusia County precinct 216, a memory card added more than 200 votes to George W. Bush's total and subtracted 16,000 votes from Al Gore. The mistake was later corrected during a hand count.

http://www.wesh.com/news/5542983/detail.html

[schrocat]

Duuuuuuuuval County says "I'm with stupid"!!!!!

"It's impossible. You can not hack into it. You would have to give someone the ability to sit down and allow them to use your system," said Jerry Holland, Duval County Supervisor of Elections.

Jerry Holland says the information stored in the voting machines is kept behind lock and key, and almost no one can access it.

Hehehehehehe...so many machines, so many problems, so many techs,and so many opportunities.
The folks who watch the polling places, check signatures, hand out the stickers that say "I voted" can see a box of paper ballots being tampered with.
But they would be clueless to the possibilities a "Rouge MayTag Repairman" could bring.

Being the only candidate who denounced paperless electronic machines
Lois Chepenik should have joined Jerry Holland's Megachurch, listed it prominently, and declared herself Republican...Oh well.Hindsight.

[Ninong]

schrocat,

What the Diebold insider is alleging is outright fraud on the part of the corporation to change election results. If his accusations are true, this is an extremely serious story.

It won't matter how many observers from both political parties are present to keep an eye on things if the company in charge of programming the machines installs unauthorized patches or uses other methods to rig the results. I'm sure if they were smart enough to design the machines, they're smart enough to know how to rig them without leaving any tracks.

[Ninong]

This is hilarious. The Democrats in Alaska would like the Republicans to explain how President Bush's official vote total is reported as only 190,889 yet when you total up all of the district-by-district vote counts, President Bush received 292,267 votes. This ridiculous set of numbers is on the state's official website.

Notice that no one doubts that Bush won Alaska, but the Democrats would like to know why Diebold's AccuVote machines produce different totals depending on how you run the tabulation programs. The Republicans responded that you wouldn't understand the complexities of this new method unless you had a degree in mathematics or engineering. I kid you not, they actually said that.

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story...-7213196c.html



P.S. -- It's nice to see the Democrats in Alaska are trying to stand up for President Bush and make sure he gets credit for all the votes Diebold gave him.

[Ninong]

California's Secretary of State (a Republican appointed by the Governator) would like to know why the federal government has never reviewed Diebold's software that programs the memory card that runs these machines. He's asking the feds to certify that this machine actually works before he's willing to let them back into California's elections. I think he may have read the reports about how that county in Florida proved that these AccuVote machines can be rigged without leaving a trace.

I wonder how the feds can recommend something if they have NEVER reviewed the source code? Looks like California is wondering the same thing.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...sn=001&sc=1000

[schrocat]

who could imagine?



THURSDAY: Amidst Intense Last-Minute Drama, St. Louis County, MO Rejects Diebold! (Plus, a Diebold lobbyist is overheard inquiring to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter about me and my family!) THURSDAY: After failure to get a court order for a special exemption from state law, Diebold sends a letter informing North Carolina they're pulling out of the state! They refuse to comply with a NC state law requiring submission of software source code! (Though they kindly offer again to help NC rewrite its law to accommodate Diebold.)
FRIDAY: CA Sec. of State discovered to have threatened ES&S (Diebold's evil twin) with decertification after documented failures in November Election: Touch-screen votes flipped, voters can't verify that ballot is accurate, incorrect reported counts of voter turnout -- but the problems were hidden from citizens until a letter discovered by AP!

[romunov]

It goes back to 2000 as well... One would imagine that this would cause a massive uproar from proud Americans who cherish their democracy and civil liberties. Got xanax?

[Ninong]

Electile dysfunction?

As the Leon County supervisor of elections, Ion Sancho's job is to make sure voting is free of fraud. But the most brazen effort lately to manipulate election results in this Florida locality was carried out by Sancho himself.

Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.

You can read the rest here.

[KAiNE]

In just one more story which illustrates the many undemocratic dangers of allowing private companies to "own" our public elections, Diebold, Inc., one of America's largest Voting Machine Companies is currently blocking citizens in Alaska from viewing election data from the 2004 general election.

Questions have begun to arise about results from that election, including the reported revelation that "district-by-district vote totals add up to 292,267 votes for President Bush, but his official total was only 190,889."

The state Division of Elections has refused to turn over its electronic voting files to the Democrats, arguing that the data format belongs to a private company and can't be made public.

The Alaska Democratic Party says the information is a public record essential for verifying the accuracy of the 2004 general election and must be provided.

The official vote results from the last general election are riddled with discrepancies and impossible for the public to make sense of, the Democrats said Monday. A detailed analysis of the underlying data could answer lingering questions about an election many thought was over more than a year ago, they say.

[SPasse]

Hi Guys,

Some comments.

I design embedded systems controllers (like the kind in Diebold voting machines) for a living. I also worked with Diebold equipment in the 1980's as a partner in a security electronics company. Diebold is a very old company that makes (among other things) bank safes.

Bottom line, someone could alter the software program to make these machines come up with any results desired.

There is undoubtedly a "craft port" on these machines in addition to their network/dial in access portals. These craft ports often don't have the same level of security around them as the dial-up/WAN access methods. I would also be extremely leery of last min software "patches"

In a situation where there is a manufacturers concern about giving a government entity access to source code, there are contractual safe guards (Non Disclosure agreements with neutral third parties etc.) that can be put in place to protect any area of program that is proprietary. (A trade secret)

For something that should have the level of public trust of a voting machine, as a public official, I would demand access to the actual code present on the voting machine and have my own software engineer reverses engineer it as part of my auditing process.

It would also be possible to add a time triggered subprogram that would only activate on Election Day. This would allow the voting machine to pass dry run audits before the actual time of the voting.

Regards,

Scott

[The Grim Reefer]

And people want to have voting over the internet

[schrocat]

Originally Posted by The Grim Reefer

And people want to have voting over the internet

eggzaxly!