Tuesday, October 28. 2003
The Diebold Conspiracy
Conspiracy Theorists love this one. With the push in the states to move to electronic voting machines, Diebold, based in North Canton, OH, is one of the front runners, and has sold voting machines to many counties in Maryland, Georgia, California (!),Kansas, and other states.
The CEO of Diebold, in a August 14th fund-raising letter to Ohio Republicans,said that he is:
Ken Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State (and a Republican) was scheduled to announce on August 15th the three finalists in bidding to provide election machines to the state. One of the finalists was Diebold. (The announcement has been postponed pening a lawsuitfrom Sequoia Systems).
Early this year, a hacker got the voting machines' software off an unprotected FTP server at Diebold. The software had serious security flaws and reports indicate that the design of software which may be at the core of our Democratic process looks like it was designed by "the neighborhood corner baseball team as opposed to the major leagues."
In August, another hacker got into Diebold (yeah, these guys know security) and gothold of an entire internal web-based message board, where Diebold's programmers discussed the software.
November, 2000. Volusiha County, FL. 16,022 voters vote for independent or 3rd party candidates for president. By far the largest number of 3rd party votes in the county's history, but maybe that's a result of the election itself, not the machines. The NEGATIVE 16,200 votes reported for Al Gore, however, is clearly a problem. Diebold still says it doesn't know what happens, but blames a bad memory card, a bad read of a memory card, or a 'second upload' from an unauthorized source.
Diebold has somehow affected the shutdown of Bev Harris' Black Box Voting.org site. BBV wasn't actually hosting the Diebold memos,and was only linked to them. Bev Harris has been looking very carefully at the possiblility that electronic voting machines may make election fraud easier, rather than harder.
Keep an eye on this one. It looks like it's going to be an interesting ride.
The CEO of Diebold, in a August 14th fund-raising letter to Ohio Republicans,said that he is:
committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year
Ken Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State (and a Republican) was scheduled to announce on August 15th the three finalists in bidding to provide election machines to the state. One of the finalists was Diebold. (The announcement has been postponed pening a lawsuitfrom Sequoia Systems).
Early this year, a hacker got the voting machines' software off an unprotected FTP server at Diebold. The software had serious security flaws and reports indicate that the design of software which may be at the core of our Democratic process looks like it was designed by "the neighborhood corner baseball team as opposed to the major leagues."
In August, another hacker got into Diebold (yeah, these guys know security) and gothold of an entire internal web-based message board, where Diebold's programmers discussed the software.
November, 2000. Volusiha County, FL. 16,022 voters vote for independent or 3rd party candidates for president. By far the largest number of 3rd party votes in the county's history, but maybe that's a result of the election itself, not the machines. The NEGATIVE 16,200 votes reported for Al Gore, however, is clearly a problem. Diebold still says it doesn't know what happens, but blames a bad memory card, a bad read of a memory card, or a 'second upload' from an unauthorized source.
Diebold has somehow affected the shutdown of Bev Harris' Black Box Voting.org site. BBV wasn't actually hosting the Diebold memos,and was only linked to them. Bev Harris has been looking very carefully at the possiblility that electronic voting machines may make election fraud easier, rather than harder.
Keep an eye on this one. It looks like it's going to be an interesting ride.
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