Subject: WORST EVER SECURITY FLAW FOUND IN DIEBOLD TS VOTING MACHINE
Contact: Alan Dechert
Reference: PICTURES
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SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA -- ?This may be the worst security flaw we have seen in touch screen voting machines,? says Open Voting Foundation president, Alan Dechert. Upon examining the inner workings of one of the most popular paperless touch screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, it has been determined that with the flip of a single switch inside, the machine can behave in a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version. ...
essentially, Diebold, the same company that makes nearly every ATM, also made the electronic voting machines that were put to use in 2004 and beyond. there's sort of a "wacky" difference between their atms and voting machines though. as one might guess, their ATMs are the model of perfect security, reliability, and accountability. they are almost impossible to scam, and every $20 bill that comes out of them is recorded digitally and onto paper and backed up lord knows how many times and probably includes a snapshot of you removing it. the engineers at Diebold are very smart and clever. so, it's sort of anomalous to find that in their AccuVote voting machines, there is no paper backup and better still, that anyone with a screwdriver can open a latch and completely change the data within- pre "Calibration/Testing" period or post. so if one were inclined they could completely wipe the votes entirely and reset the machine's "count" manually and there is absolutely no electronic data or hardcopy that it had been tampered with at all.
one might suspect that the AccuVote machines were intentionally flawed.
the following i pulled off someone's post on /. :
"IN mid-August, Walden W. O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc., sat down at his computer to compose a letter inviting 100 wealthy and politically inclined friends to a Republican Party fund-raiser, to be held at his home in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. ''I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year,'' wrote Mr. O'Dell, whose company is based in Canton, Ohio."