Will the election be hacked? It's glaringly clear by this article that DieBold has our best interests at heart. I'm sure that any problems with the election system are purely accidental.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/02/09/voting_machines/index_np.html
(excerpt)
DieBold has downplayed such vulnerabilities, arguing
that
studies by the Hopkins researchers and others fail to account for the
security safeguards employed by the electoral system. DieBold, however,
has
come under heavy scrutiny not just for the alleged flaws in its software,
but for internal emails that apparently acknowledged security holes and
recommended the circumvention of testing authorities; one program manager
suggested that DieBold charge exorbitant prices for adding a
voter-verifiable paper trail to its machines.
My prediction? No matter what, we'll see DieBold in court someday talking about how they were unaware there where problems with their software, and amazingly, no one thought to inform the CEO or anyone else who could do anything about it. This has become known as the Ken Lay (Enron) defense.
If your a DieBold stockholder, you can see how the company is doing http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=DBD&d=t
Anyone from Maryland out there? Hey your state has certified AccuVote for YOUR election!
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040129/clth080_1.html
Here is Karl's phone number (Maryland Secretary of State) if you should decide that this is a bad idea. 410-974-5521 or 888-874-0013
http://www.sos.state.md.us/
But hey, he seems to be pretty unbiased.
http://www.sos.state.md.us/rkabio.htm
(excerpt)
Long active in Maryland's Republican Party, Secretary Aumann was president of the Loyola College Republicans for two years and was elected First Vice-Chairman of the Maryland Federation of College Republicans in 1981. In 1983, he helped found the North Central Republican Club of Baltimore County where he served as president and vice-president. He was elected a member of the State Central Committee for Baltimore County in 1986 and again in 1990.
In 1991, Mr. Aumann was appointed by President George H. W. Bush as counsel and senior policy advisor to the Appalachian Regional Commission. When Governor Ehrlich was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1994, Mr. Aumann became his Chief Administrator and District Director, a position he held until 2003. His responsibilities included office oversight and policy development, with special focus on international relations.
No doubt he knows what he is doing when he certified AccuVote for his state!
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Monday, February 09, 2004
ABC News has finally come out and said it.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?section=Opinion&OID=43845
Monday, February 2, 2004 11:30 PM
Electronic voting makes election cheating too easy
Concerned citizens have been warning that new-electronic voting technology being rolled out nationwide can be used to steal elections. Now there is proof.
When the state of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines’ vote-recording mechanisms. The Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails.
When Maryland decided to buy 16,000 AccuVote-TS voting machines, there was considerable opposition. Critics charged that the new touch-screen machines, which do not create a paper record of votes cast, were vulnerable to vote theft. The state commissioned a staged attack on the machines, in which computer-security experts would try to foil the safeguards and interfere with an election.
They were disturbingly successful. It was an “easy matter,” they reported, to reprogram the access cards used by voters and vote multiple times. They were able to attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change its vote count. And by exploiting a software flaw and using a modem, they were able to change votes from a remote location.
Critics of new voting technology are often accused of being alarmist, but this state-sponsored study contains vulnerabilities that seem almost too bad to be true. Maryland’s 16,000 machines all have identical locks on two sensitive mechanisms, which can be opened by any one of 32,000 keys. The security team had no trouble making duplicates of the keys at local hardware stores, although that proved unnecessary since one team member picked the lock in “approximately 10 seconds.”
Diebold, the machines’ manufacturer, rushed to issue a self-congratulatory press release with the headline “Maryland Security Study Validates Diebold Election Systems Equipment for March Primary.” The study's authors were shocked to see their findings spun so positively. Their report said that if flaws they identified were fixed, the machines could be used in Maryland’s March 2 primary. But in the long run, they said, an extensive overhaul of the ma chines and at least a limited paper trail are necessary.
The Maryland study confirms concerns about electronic voting that are rapidly accumulating from actual elections. In Boone County, Indiana, last fall, in a particularly colorful example of unreliability, an electronic system initially recorded more than 144,000 votes in an election with fewer than 19,000 registered voters, County Clerk Lisa Garofolo said.
Given the growing body of evidence, it is clear that electronic voting machines cannot be trusted until more safeguards are in place. The New York Times
If you haven't been paying attention, AccuVote is a system developed by Diebold. You can place your order at http://www.diebold.com/dieboldes/accuvote_ts.htm
So what if a corporation that wins a government contract delivers an inferior product? It has to be an improvment on punch cards and chads right? Well, that depends on if you think that the voting machines should be impartial to the users intent. Maybe Diebold is an impartial supplier of equipment who is just trying to make a buck. And maybe the system though insecure, will be compromised equally so that it doesn't give an edge to one canidate or another... Well, friends, perhaps. But Diebold is a supportor of the GOP.
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldusenix.html
http://foi.missouri.edu/evolvingissues/wincontract.html
(excerpt)
In Ohio, state Sen. Jeff Jacobson, a suburban Dayton Republican, reacted to the report by calling upon Blackwell to remove Diebold from the running here.
Political insiders say it would be virtually impossible - given the firm's political connections - for Blackwell, a Republican, to not have Diebold on his final list.
Diebold chief executive Walden O'Dell is a generous contributor to Republican campaigns and fund-raisers, from the Republican National Committee and White House on down.
He and his wife donated a combined $8,500 to Gov. Bob Taft between June 2001 and October 2002, state records show, and Taft subsequently appointed O'Dell to the board of trustees at Ohio State University.
W.R. "Tim" Timken, one of Ohio's most influential Republicans, is on Diebold's board. Members of the Timken family contributed almost $66,000 to Republican campaigns in Ohio from 2000 to 2002.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?section=Opinion&OID=43845
Monday, February 2, 2004 11:30 PM
Electronic voting makes election cheating too easy
Concerned citizens have been warning that new-electronic voting technology being rolled out nationwide can be used to steal elections. Now there is proof.
When the state of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines’ vote-recording mechanisms. The Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails.
When Maryland decided to buy 16,000 AccuVote-TS voting machines, there was considerable opposition. Critics charged that the new touch-screen machines, which do not create a paper record of votes cast, were vulnerable to vote theft. The state commissioned a staged attack on the machines, in which computer-security experts would try to foil the safeguards and interfere with an election.
They were disturbingly successful. It was an “easy matter,” they reported, to reprogram the access cards used by voters and vote multiple times. They were able to attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change its vote count. And by exploiting a software flaw and using a modem, they were able to change votes from a remote location.
Critics of new voting technology are often accused of being alarmist, but this state-sponsored study contains vulnerabilities that seem almost too bad to be true. Maryland’s 16,000 machines all have identical locks on two sensitive mechanisms, which can be opened by any one of 32,000 keys. The security team had no trouble making duplicates of the keys at local hardware stores, although that proved unnecessary since one team member picked the lock in “approximately 10 seconds.”
Diebold, the machines’ manufacturer, rushed to issue a self-congratulatory press release with the headline “Maryland Security Study Validates Diebold Election Systems Equipment for March Primary.” The study's authors were shocked to see their findings spun so positively. Their report said that if flaws they identified were fixed, the machines could be used in Maryland’s March 2 primary. But in the long run, they said, an extensive overhaul of the ma chines and at least a limited paper trail are necessary.
The Maryland study confirms concerns about electronic voting that are rapidly accumulating from actual elections. In Boone County, Indiana, last fall, in a particularly colorful example of unreliability, an electronic system initially recorded more than 144,000 votes in an election with fewer than 19,000 registered voters, County Clerk Lisa Garofolo said.
Given the growing body of evidence, it is clear that electronic voting machines cannot be trusted until more safeguards are in place. The New York Times
If you haven't been paying attention, AccuVote is a system developed by Diebold. You can place your order at http://www.diebold.com/dieboldes/accuvote_ts.htm
So what if a corporation that wins a government contract delivers an inferior product? It has to be an improvment on punch cards and chads right? Well, that depends on if you think that the voting machines should be impartial to the users intent. Maybe Diebold is an impartial supplier of equipment who is just trying to make a buck. And maybe the system though insecure, will be compromised equally so that it doesn't give an edge to one canidate or another... Well, friends, perhaps. But Diebold is a supportor of the GOP.
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldusenix.html
http://foi.missouri.edu/evolvingissues/wincontract.html
(excerpt)
In Ohio, state Sen. Jeff Jacobson, a suburban Dayton Republican, reacted to the report by calling upon Blackwell to remove Diebold from the running here.
Political insiders say it would be virtually impossible - given the firm's political connections - for Blackwell, a Republican, to not have Diebold on his final list.
Diebold chief executive Walden O'Dell is a generous contributor to Republican campaigns and fund-raisers, from the Republican National Committee and White House on down.
He and his wife donated a combined $8,500 to Gov. Bob Taft between June 2001 and October 2002, state records show, and Taft subsequently appointed O'Dell to the board of trustees at Ohio State University.
W.R. "Tim" Timken, one of Ohio's most influential Republicans, is on Diebold's board. Members of the Timken family contributed almost $66,000 to Republican campaigns in Ohio from 2000 to 2002.
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