electronic voting...potential for abuse

My concern about Diebold, Scrat, whether they have "ties to conservatives" or not, is that:

a) they have been producing machines which have no paper trail and have (I just heard, in Bexar County, Texas) been stalling about retrofitting them with printers,

b) and they are insecure -- as vouched for by Diebold's own employees.

There have been concerns about the software and tampering with the software.

Perhaps a foreign or even American manufacturer could be found to do the job? Perhaps Diebold could do the job right?

In a major victory for free speech enthusiasts on the Internet, Diebold Inc. has agreed not to sue voting rights advocates who publish leaked documents about the alleged security breaches of electronic voting.

A Diebold spokesman promised in a conference call Monday with U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel and attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that it would not sue dozens of students, computer scientists and ISP operators who received cease-and-desist letters from August to October.

Diebold also promised not to file lawsuits against two Swarthmore College students and a San Francisco-based Internet service provider for copyright infringement, according to a motion that company attorneys filed Nov. 24 in San Jose's federal court.

Diebold did not disclose specifics on why it had dropped its legal case, but the decision is a major reversal of the company's previous strategy. North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold, which controls more than 50,000 touch-screen voting machines nationwide, had threatened legal action against dozens of individuals who refused to remove links to its stolen data.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The state's top elections official said Tuesday that security problems found in new touch-screen voting systems mean they won't be in place statewide in time for the November 2004 presidential election.

Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell said some of the new voting machines would be installed in August, some in November and the rest in 2005.

That means some of Ohio's 69 counties will still be using punch-card systems for the 2004 election. Problems with punch cards in Florida left the outcome of the 2000 presidential race in doubt for more than a month.

The four electronic touch-screen systems must be proven secure before Ohio voters use them, Blackwell said. His office will work with the manufacturers to ensure the problems are corrected, he said.

Ohio and much of the rest of the nation are upgrading voting equipment under legislation passed by Congress after the 2000 election.

The state must ask the Federal Elections Commission for an extension in complying with the law, Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo said.

Companies that tested the security systems of the four machine types found software that permits votes to be counted more than once, and a risk that unauthorized poll workers or others could gain access to the system.

Identical passwords were discovered for more than one poll worker, while voting booth cases did not provide for locks, leaving a risk of tampering during transportation of ballots.

Each of the voting systems provided by the four vendors -- Diebold Election Systems, Sequoia Voting Systems, Election Systems & Software and Maximus/Hart Intercivic/DFM Associates -- has multiple but not identical problems, Blackwell said.

If the electronic voting machines were secure (in all the ways mentioned above), then the ties between Diebold and the Republican Party would not be relevant.

Because the machines are not secure, those ties (and they are significant) become very much a valid cause for concern and for citizen activism until security is assured.

It wouldn't matter which party the company might be affiliated with.

Which party might be 'dirtier' or 'who started it first' is a separate question which won't be resolved by us.

What remains the greatest threat to democracy in the 2004 election?

Some would argue that it may be the ability of the companies who manufacture and maintain electronic voting machines to elect a candidate through reprogrammed software - or maybe a third party who could hack the vote counting software and change the tally.

At first, dismissed as the paranoid delusions of a few diehard researchers, a growing number of states are researching these accusations -- among others -- and discovering that many of the concerns are valid. On December 3, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that, "Ohio's sweeping review of electronic voting machines turned up so many potential security flaws in the systems that the state's top elections official has called off deploying them in March".

When we first interviewed Bev Harris, a pioneer in exposing the dangerous potential for election manipulation that electronic voting machines pose, she wanted to ensure that BuzzFlash didn't make her into a hero. Harris wrote us a long e-mail detailing many of the people who have tirelessly worked to bring this issue to the point that it is now being seriously addressed. And Harris is right: dozens of patriotic Americans have endured a lot of skepticism and legal threats for working to ensure that elective democracy works.

* * *

BUZZFLASH: Explain the implications of Diebold withdrawing its lawsuit and how this impacts you.

BEV HARRIS: First, the impact of Diebold's abusive use of copyright law did very serious damage to my organization and me. This triggered a shutdown of BlackBoxVoting.org, which lasted 30 days and derailed activism to monitor the California Recall Election, stripping away our activism base as it muted my voice on the issue. It nearly decapitated blackboxvoting.org.

Diebold's withdrawal from the lawsuit was good; now Diebold should consider withdrawing from the elections industry. Even in baseball, you only get three strikes. At what point do we say to this company, "Sorry, I just can't trust you anymore."

Now, as for the impact of their withdrawal from the lawsuit on me and what I will do next, let me explain.

I was sent the Diebold memos by a leaker on September 5, during the middle of the night. On September 6, I delved into them and didn't come up for air until two days later. During that time, I read 7,000 memos and made 300 pages of notes divided into five categories. The impact of Diebold's withdrawal from the lawsuit is that I have arranged to make this body of work public. Until now, aside from placing a copy in the hands of someone who could disseminate the work were I to become unavailable, I have done nothing with them.

If the Diebold FTP files are in some ways similar to the Pentagon Papers, the memos are analogous to the Watergate Tapes. And whether or not the issue is "as big as Watergate" -- it is actually more important than Watergate. (emphasis PDiddie's)

BUZZFLASH: Do you think that they feared what would come out in the discovery process would only worsen the credibility of their electronic voting machines?

HARRIS: I think that they feared a congressional investigation. In my opinion, the lawsuit could have gone either way, but what made this unwinnable was (Congressman and presidential candidate) Dennis Kucinich placing the memos on his web site and then publicly calling for Diebold to step down on its DMCA claims. There were other pressures from congress that I cannot release the details on. The U.S. Congress will, I believe, have a historic impact on this issue. By the way, if you are an assistant to a congressperson and you are reading this, e-mail me at [email protected]. And that includes Republicans.

scrat

'Assuming' is an odd choice of word, given all the text above your post.

And your question is not comprehensible. Could you either rephrase it, or just answer it yourself. I'll assume you would prefer a secure arrangement, and that whatever aspects are at risk, each ought to be resolved.

Since she has expressed concerns about Diebold due to what she calls ties to conservatives, I wondered what company or entity she would have create voting machines.

Assuming the machines are not secure, wouldn't it matter more which party is operating the machines as opposed to which one has ties to the company?