San Diego, June 6 2006: Sent these voting machines home with poll workers for sleepovers. They said the seal on the memory card bay made it secure.
STILL GOING HOME FOR SLEEPOVERS in King County, Washington: King County elections officials told citizens on Aug. 29 2006 in a videotaped statement that they are using the door and plastic tab seal as shown in these pictures, and they are sending the voting machines home with poll workers for the September primary election.
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Since you can open up the machine, remove and reprogram the memory card, and put it back, without having to touch the "tamper-evident seal," those seals are totally worthless.
Of course Diebold knew about this. They designed the machines, the little metal door, and the "tamper-evident seals." It was obviously a ploy to distract our attention.
This has to be demonstrated to every elections authority that has a contract with Diebold. Even if they are using different model machines, it demonstrates how worthless Diebold "security" is, in a manner that nobody who sees it can dispute.
This is the most glaring evidence of consumer fraud I've ever seen. Any District Attorney who sees this demonstration and is aware that Diebold promoted their "tamper-evident seals," as a means of securing the memory cards, should bring charges immediately. The seals do not do what they were advertised to do. Consumer fraud pure and simple. Worse, the taxpayers, through their local elected officials who signed contracts with Diebold and bought those machines, were the consumers who were defrauded. That's all of us.
--Mark
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 98 diaries, 1308 comments)
on Sunday, September 3, 2006 at 2:50:46 PM
San Diego Registrar of voters Mikel Haas has explained that he cannot hold an election unless he is allowed to send the voting machines home with poll workers prior to the election.
So if I was a bad guy who wanted to rig an election, I'd just encourage a few of my friends to sign up as precinct inspectors. Once they had the voting machines in their homes, I'd go over for a friendly social visit, and they'd probably be happy to show me the machine. Then I'd take out a twenty and ask them to go to the store and get us a six-pack or a bottle of wine, and while they were gone I'd open up the machine, reprogram the memory card, close the machine back up, and they'd never be the wiser.
Nor would anyone else.
Voting machines are a lot like teenagers. If you let them go on unsupervised sleepovers without protection, it is quite possible that they could pick up a virus. A responsible parent would either ensure that they understood the dangers and were protected, or forbid unsupervised sleepovers. Failing that, it might be a good idea to have them tested.
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