| Voting Company Reverses Stand: Flawed software WAS used
in Georgia and other elections - Official to city of
Boston: There are “kinks” in touch screens
By Bev Harris
According to an Aug. 4 article in Wired.com: Diebold
company spokesman Mike Jacobsen “confirmed that the source code Rubin's
team examined was last used in November 2002 general elections in Georgia,
Maryland and in counties in California and Kansas.” (http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59874,00.html)
Actually, the software may have been used in as many as
13 states and 197 counties, according to Diebold documents given to Santa
Clara County in Feb. 2003 (http://www.blackboxvoting.org/mfr.pdf) - list
of counties at bottom.
Earlier, Diebold had told reporters that the software
which contained “stunning security flaws” that made hacking easy, was
an older version and never used in any election.
Yet it was used, and provably so. The Diebold software
version was easily verifiable:
- The FEC requires certification of voting machine
software by version number
- The certified version number matches what was studied
by the Johns Hopkins scientists. More: http://avirubin.com/vote/response.html
STILL “KINKS” IN THE TOUCH SCREENS: John Silvestro,
a voting machine representative in Boston who sells Diebold machines,
(http://www.lhsassociates.com), said the touch-screen system would cost
the city about six times as much money as optical scan machines which have
a paper audit trail, and that companies like his are still working the
kinks out of the touch-screen machines. Silvestro told the Boston City
Council that Boston was better off with optical scanners. (http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/214/metro/Menino_OK_s_new_voting_machines+.shtml)
Georgia, perhaps hardest hit by the growing Diebold
scandal, is now facing renewed questions about missing memory cards and
other irregularities. On election night during the 2002 general election,
67 memory cards, containing thousands of votes, went missing in Fulton
County. Also, according to documents provided to Santa Clara County,
Diebold machines experienced “buffer overrun” problems during the
election, requiring poll workers to turn them on and off, and if not done
properly, this can also cause loss of votes.
Georgia officials, responding to a Freedom of
Information Act request by Georgia voters, admitted that they did not have
any of the certification documents clearing use of the machines following
a series of unexamined program patches put on the machines right before
the election. Georgia law requires that any time software is updated, it
must be recertified, but the patches were never examined by testing labs.
No one really knows what was on the patches; Diebold denied that patches
were done. (http://www.blackboxvoting.org/lies.htm)
According to technicians (http://www.blackboxvoting.org/robgeorgia.htm)
who administered the patches, they were told to download them directly off
the Internet from the Diebold ftp site, rather than getting them from
Microsoft (as they would if they were Windows patches) or from the
Independent Testing Authority (as the Georgia examiner for voting
machines, Dr. Brit Williams -- http://www.blackboxvoting.org/Williams.htm
-- describes the required procedure).
In a new controversy, researchers with
BlackBoxVoting.org say they have discovered that changes were made in the
Windows operating system used with the voting machines.
According to Dr. Doug Jones, a member of the Iowa Board
of Examiners for Elections and an expert congressional witness on
electronic voting: “The FEC/NASED Voting System Standards require that
all software used in voting systems be passed through a source-code audit,
but there is an exemption, in both the 1990 and 2002 editions of this
standard, for UNMODIFIED third-party 'COTS' software, that is, commercial
off-the-shelf software produced by a third party THAT HAS NOT BEEN
MODIFIED for use in the voting context. Use of Microsoft Windows and
Microsoft Office clearly qualifies for this exemption.” (http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldftp.html)
Jones says that Diebold made representations to him that
they made no changes whatsoever to the Windows operating system, yet new
information from Black Box Voting indicates that significant changes to
Windows were made.
“Source code files clearly show that Windows source
code was modified.” says Bev Harris, author of ‘Black Box Voting.’ A
new Freedom of Information Act is now being filed in Georgia seeking to
clarify whether changes in Windows were disclosed and authorized, and
Black Box Voting researchers are examining what impact the changes have on
the voting program and its security.
OTHER STORY ANGLES:
- Experts point to secrecy, flaws in certification
system
- Following the money trail: Lobbying, kickbacks and
contributions
- Touch screens done right: Accurate, with a
voter-verified paper trail, NASED certified. (http://www.aitechnology.com/votetrakker2/home.htm)
- COUNTIES THAT USE DIEBOLD TOUCH SCREENS
- Alameda County, California
- Kern County, California
- Los Angeles County, California
- Marin County, California
- Modoc County, California
- Plumas County, California
- San Diego County, California
- San Joaquin County, California
- Solano County, California
- Tulare County, California
- El Paso County, Colorado
- Saguache County, Colorado
- Weld County, Colorado
- ===========================
- GEORGIA: All 159 counties
- ===========================
- Tippecanoe County, Indiana
- Johnson County, Kansas
- Jefferson County, Kentucky
- Allegany County, Maryland
- Dorchester County, Maryland
- Montgomery County, Maryland
- Prince Georges County, Maryland
- ===============================
- MARYLAND: All counties in Maryland have purchased
Diebold touch screen machines
- ===============================
- Gaston County, North Carolina
- Rowan County, North Carolina
- Douglas County, Nebraska
- Lancaster County, Nebraska
- ===============================
- OHIO: Most of Ohio is considering purchase of Diebold
machines
- ===============================
- Bradley County, Tennessee
- Rutherford County, Tennessee
- Shelby County, Tennessee
- El Paso County, Texas
- Franklin County, Texas
- Guadalupe County, Texas
- City of Norfolk, Virginia
Bev Harris 425-228-7131 or Bev@blackboxvoting.org
Author: Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century http://www.blackboxvoting.org
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