Diebold

The point of this post at slashdot is that a Diebold AccuVote TS touchscreen voting machine can easily be made to boot from different software even after the machine has been "certified" and "verified".

-- ge

Apparently Diebold is still attempting to have the North Carolina election laws changed so that they can sell machines to the counties without disclosing all of their code. The issue is dealt with in decent detail in this diary on DailyKos. I have not had time to follow up on the issue but wanted to pass on the link for our readers.

My background can be found here and here.

I have been blogging on the travails of Diebold in recent posts, but BradBlog has found out that ESS, the only company still selling voting machines in North Carolina, has had its own trouble and was almost decertified in California. His blog is here.

Diebold announced yesterday that they were dropping out of consideration for selling voting machines to North Carolina counties, citing their inability to meet the current transparency standards required by the State. Their claim is that they cannot reveal all of their code because some is owned by a third party; however, the company has never shown an effort to get the third-parties to allow release of the code to the State.

The decision of Diebold leaves only one company vying to sell equiptment in the state, Electronic Systems and Software. Now Counties are trying to get the laws changed. From the Durham Herald Sun:

Superior Court Judge Ripley Rand has ruled against the EFF in its bid to stop Diebold and others from selling voting equiptment in the state. The challengers had claimed that the certification of the firms was illegal because the firms were not willing to follow the transparency laws of the state. Oh well, there are always appeals.

Background here. Story here.

In an earlier post, I talked about the State certifying Diebold voting machines despite the fact that Diebold would not disclose their source code as required by North Carolina law. Now the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued the Board of Elections to make them follow the law, which was passed to ensure the security of votes cast on electronic voting machines. From EFF:

"This is about the rule of law," said EFF Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "The Board of Elections has simply ignored its mandatory obligations under North Carolina election law. This statute was enacted to require election officials to investigate the quality and security of voting systems before approval, and only approve those that are safe and secure. By certifying without a full review of all relevant code, the Board of Elections has now opened the door for North Carolina counties to purchase untested and potentially insecure voting equipment."

(EFF's press release is here)
I am going to watch this closely. But it is sad that an outside group has to sue to get the Board of Elections to follow the law.