[Lokutus]

Former delegate gets purported Diebold code
FBI is contacted over anonymous package
By Melissa Harris
Sun reporter
Originally published October 20, 2006

Diebold Election Systems Inc. expressed alarm and state election officials contacted the FBI yesterday after a former legislator received an anonymous package containing what appears to be the computer code that ran Maryland's polls in 2004.

Cheryl C. Kagan, a longtime critic of Maryland's elections chief, says the fact that the computer disks were sent to her - along with an unsigned note criticizing the management of the state elections board - demonstrates that Maryland's voting system faces grave security threats.


Full Article

[Lokutus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')n accompanying letter refers to the State Board of Elections and calls Kagan "the proud recipient of an 'abandoned baby Diebold source code' right from SBE accidentally picked up in this envelope, right in plain view at SBE. ... You have the software because you are a credible person who can save the state from itself. You must alert the media and save democracy."

[Lokutus]

Computer geeks want to make everything computerized - except voting. If you go to any geek board, they're all against computerized voting because they know how easy results can be manipulated.

That should be a warning to the non-computer literate.

[NEOPO]

This will get ugly.....
Excellent timing....
V lives

[Lokutus]

Ambassadorships are handed out as rewards to bagmen and others who helped a president get into the WH.

Right after the 2004 election, Bush appointed a Deibold director the ambassador to Germany, IIRC.

Before that election, the Deibold CEO promised to help Bush win his state. And he did.

[Lokutus]

Knocking the Vote
Diebold says its voting machines are bulletproof. Hackers say otherwise.
By James Renner


http://www.clevescene.com/issues/2005-1 ... /news.html

Subtlety has not been a recurring theme among Diebold execs. From 2000 through 2004, board member William "Tim" Timken helped raise $800 million for Republican coffers. He was rewarded by Bush with an ambassadorship to Germany this year [see "Lederhosed," August 31].

[Zardoz]

Well, of course now we have to wonder where else this sort of thing is going down. If one disk is out there, there can certainly be many more. Maryland's voting system faces grave security threats, all right. So does America's.

However, the real question is how will our beloved Mainstream Media cover this? The validity of our entire electoral system is at stake. Will this even be noticed? Will it be lightly covered and then forgotten? Or will it be actively suppressed?

Stay tuned. How this is handled by the media will provide strong clues as to how deep and pervasive the corruption is.

[Dreamtwister]

Great, now where's the source code? Anyone got it?

[TITAN]

This is awesome news, unfortunately, it will go nowhere. Keith Olberman might say something for a night or two, but most people don't watch MSNBC.

Drudge needs to put it up front for about 4 or 5 days for it to really start circulating...Unfortunately, he's in bed with the neocons...

[PolestaR]

These voting machines would only need a few hundred lines of source code (not many to non nerds) to achieve what they do. The security would be separate from this.. but would be many times more complex yet external from the actual voting code. Of course if all the logic is done in hardware I would like to see the designs etc.

Anyhow.. my point is I bet the voting code has been made out to be thousands to millions lines of code to hide any "flaws" in it. And the amount of code needed to rig an election? One line of source code change. Is there some way to know whether the programmers were republicans.. democrats.. etc? Is there like a proofreading of all the code by many trusted people? Why isn't the source code open source.. and available to be read by the people voting?

Too much black box to hide any bad behaviour for my liking.

[ClassicSpiderman]

Neocons (descendants of Trotskyists) want to rig elections? NO surprise here. A few SQL updates can easily change a small percentage votes to swing a close election in their favor. "Voters do not have the power, it's those that count the votes that do". Even assuming that Diebold is 100% forthright and honest about counting votes, the fact that they hold so much unverifiable power puts a dark cloud over the entire system.

I don't think there's anything wrong with computerized voting machines as long as a paper ballot is printed for the voter to verify before he puts it inside a ballot box. The election results could in theory, be announced almost immediately as soon as the polls close, and then election officials can proceed to count the paper ballots to see if they match the results in the database.

Any irregularities that occur in this "paper trail" system can then be used to correct any bugs that were due to human error for the next election. Without a printed ballot to double verify the results, the code can be easily manipulated by partisans with an axe to grind.

Just to play Devil's Advocate, for all we know, the source code that was released by the concerned programmer could be a complete fabrication in order to smear the Republicans. If Diebold had agreed to a printed ballot system, they could refute these allegations with hard evidence.

[Lokutus]

Indian voting machines use a two-piece system with a balloting unit presenting the voter with a button (momentary switch) for each choice connected by a cable to an electronic ballot box.

An EVM consists of two units:

* Control Unit
* Balloting Unit

The two units are joined by a five-meter cable. The Control Unit is with the Presiding Officer or a Polling Officer and the Balloting Unit is placed inside the voting compartment. Instead of issuing a ballot paper, the Polling Officer in-charge of the Control Unit will press the Ballot Button. This will enable the voter to cast his vote by pressing the blue button on the Balloting Unit against the candidate and symbol of his choice.

The microchip used in EVMs is manufactured in Japan and it is sealed at the time of import. It cannot be opened and any attempt to rewrite the program cannot be done without damaging the chip.

The cost per EVM (One Control Unit, one Balloting Unit and one battery) was Rs.5,500/- at the time the machines were purchased in 1989-90. Even though the initial investment was somewhat heavy, it was more than neutralised by the savings in the matter of production and printing of ballot papers in lakhs, their transportation, storage etc., and the substantial reduction in the counting staff and the remuneration paid to them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_voting_machines