Ex-delegate gets Diebold voting code in mail
By Conrad Quilty-Harper 
posted Oct 22nd 2006 7:11PM
posted Oct 22nd 2006 7:11PM
With all the recent blunders and whistleblower interviews about the Diebold electronic voting fiasco, it would have been easy to believe that it couldn't get any worse for Diebold Systems. That's probably what Cheryl C. Kagan, an ex-Democratic delegate and an outspoken critic of Maryland's election chief, thought before she received a parcel containing the code that ran Maryland's electronic voting machines in the 2004 election, along with a note calling for her to "alert the media." Although Diebold Election Systems claims that the code is old and does not infringe the security of the current up-to-date system, the fact that it was sent at all exposes a fundamental security flaw in Diebold System's supposed "glitch-free" setup. The only viable solution to all this -- which would make voters happy and give Diebold Systems *some* credibility -- is if the code is released in an open source form. Even though we'd like to believe that the current version of Diebold's voting code (4.6) is more secure that the leaked code (4.3.15c), the litany of security failures on Diebold's part gives us little reason to trust them.
I don't understand why we are still allowing our politicians to rely on the controversial Diebold to facilitate our nation's electronic voting system.
etane, it's simple: money. Voting and the way people vote is big business.
I use exclusively Linux, but I do not agree that the Diebold machines' code should be made open... why? because if a malicious person finds a hole by looking at the source, no one is _making_ him tell the community that votes can be stolen
If someone can steal the source or find a flow somehow and the source isn't open, there won't be anyone to catch the flaw beforehand. The person who steals the code or finds a way to crack it after the fact sure as hell isn't going to be nice about it.
At least if the code is open and floating around everyone can take a poke at it, the more eyes looking at it the more likely a bug can be made public. Making it public means they are forced to fix it or not use the machine.
Umm.. I hope somebody actually, you know.. looked at the code.
votes_Democratic * .75 = votes_Democratic;
votes_Republican * 1.25 = votes_Republican;
IANAP. =)
test....yum
Great, so if the media gets this, they will blow it up into some end-of-the-world problem. I love watching my local Fox news channel and talk about things I've already read, but with either an attached lie that they have added, or reporting it as a HUGE problem..
Dems cry foul about electronic voting machines when they lose, and also fight picture ID requirements to vote elsewhere. (Arizona) Now who's talking fraud?
Two totally different things Mick. Photo ID requirements has the danger of excluding people who are registered and are citizens from voting who might otherwise not drive, not have a passport, are elderly, those that might not speak English as a first language, people who might have left their ID at home, etc.
There still are checks in place to ensure the quality of an election without the need of ID, as exhibited in the other states.
However, electronic voting fraud is nefarious, because there's no way in its current form for us to authenticate or stop fraud if we wanted to.
Thomas, you don't get the idea of open source, do you? It's not that everyone has to contribute in mending errors, it's that everyone can.
And, yeah, did anyone check out the code yet? Or was this delegate the wrong person to send it to?
I almost can belive that they are only concerned about "the fact that it was sent at all". Any audit might still be illegal as the code was leaked in the first place. What a shame.
hey dan has my last name, one of the world's top ten funniest last names!
From Assimilated Press":
North Korean Dictator Praises Diebold
Sorry, here's that link again:
http://assimilatedpress.blogspot.com/2006/10/north-korean-dictator-praises-diebold.html
When non-technical people make descisions of a technical nature, the result is almost always this:
Pay too much
Get laughable quality
This happened in this case.
"In Ohio, a statewide survey found four instances of ineligible persons voting or attempting to vote in 2002 and 2004, out of 9,078,728 votes cast - a rate of 0.00004 percent. Cathy Cox, the secretary of state for Georgia, has admitted that she could not recall one documented case of voter impersonation at the polls during her nine years as the state's top election official."
http://www.louisianaweekly.com/weekly/news/articlegate.pl?20061009e
year, we really need voter id requirements /sarcasm
They're lying to you.
I don't understand why we can have databases that map every square foot of the Earth's surface but can't have one that we could log into and vote. This would allow people to have a longer window to vote as well as verify things.
"fight picture ID requirements to vote elsewhere."
I vote absentee because I refuse to use Diebold machines. How many times have I had to show a photo I.D. for my absentee ballot? Zero