November 27, 2005

"Can Diebold machines pass the test"

"Back in May, voting activists went on the Internet and for $300 apiece purchased two devices used to record moisture levels in corn.

Certain corn scanners use the same memory cards as Diebold Election Systems' optical-scanning machines for ballots and can easily modify them. That makes corn scanners into a tool for vote hacking.

Sitting by a hotel pool last spring in Florida, Finnish computer expert Harri Hursti wrote his own program onto a memory card so it could alter poll results on a Diebold machine in Leon County and flash a screen message — "Are we having fun yet?" — that shocked the local elections supervisor.

Prodded by activists with nonprofit Black Box Voting, California elections officials have agreed to a test hack of the Diebold voting machines running in 17 of its counties, from San Diego to Los Angeles and Alameda to Humboldt.

The test, first reported by the Oakland Tribune last week, originally was scheduled for Wednesday but is likely to be delayed until mid-December.

At risk for Diebold is reputation, millions of dollars in sales and possibly its mantle as the nation's largest supplier of electronic voting equipment.

If Hursti or another computer expert succeed in hacking Diebold's voting machinery, the McKinney, Texas, firm could be forced to redesign software fundamental to each major component of its voting system. Securing new state and federal approvals would bring delay and loss of sales the company is counting on prior to the June 2006 primary.

Counties face Jan. 1 state and federal deadlines for acquiring new, handicapped-accessible voting systems that also offer some form of paper record. Those counties relying on Diebold might turn to other voting-system makers.

As a result, there have been extensive, ongoing negotiations between Black Box Voting and the California Secretary of State's office, which also is talking to Diebold, over conditions of the test, confidentiality of the results and measures of success. Those talks continued this weekend, but state officials said they remain committed to performing the test.

"Secretary (Bruce) McPherson takes testing these systems very seriously," said his spokeswoman Nghia Nguyen Demovic. "He wants safeguards in place so that every vote cast is secured. He's doing his due diligence to assure voter confidence."

You can read the article here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at November 27, 2005 10:49 AM