Guest blogged by Winter Patriot
Yesterday, OpEdNews published an astonishing article by David Dill, Doug Jones and Barbara Simons, an article which blows the lid off the shenanigans that have been going on between Diebold and the State of Maryland.
Wise men say “Consider the source.” That’s always a good idea. In this case, all three authors have very impressive credentials:
Doug Jones is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Iowa.
Barbara Simons is retired from IBM Research and a former ACM [Association for Computing Machinery] President.
Turning to the article itself, here are the first few paragraphs:
Recently, computer security expert Harri Hursti revealed serious security vulnerabilities in Diebold’s software. According to Michael Shamos, a computer scientist and voting system examiner in Pennsylvania, “It’s the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system.”
Even more shockingly, we learned recently that Diebold and the State of Maryland had been aware of these vulnerabilities for at least two years. They were documented in analysis, commissioned by Maryland and conducted by RABA Technologies, published in January 2004. For over two years, Diebold has chosen not to fix the security holes, and Maryland has chosen not to alert other states or national officials about these problems.
Basically, Diebold included a “back door” in its software, allowing anyone to change or modify the software. There are no technical safeguards in place to ensure that only authorized people can make changes.
A malicious individual with access to a voting machine could rig the software without being detected. Worse yet, if the attacker rigged the machine used to compute the totals for some precinct, he or she could alter the results of that precinct. The only fix the RABA authors suggested was to warn people that manipulating an election is against the law.
So manipulating an election is against the law? Who’da thunk it?
Sorry! I couldn’t help myself.
The remainder of the article, unaccompanied by smart remarks, follows:
Diebold spokesman David Bear admitted to the New York Times that the back door was inserted intentionally so that election officials would be able to update their systems easily. Bear justified Diebold’s actions by saying, “For there to be a problem here, you’re basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software… I don’t believe these evil elections people exist.”
While Diebold’s confidence in election officials is heartwarming, Diebold has placed election officials in an awkward position, with no defense against disgruntled candidates or voters questioning the results of an election. The situation is even worse for those states and localities using Diebold touch-screen machines that have no voter-verified paper records to recount.
Diebold voting machines have been certified to be in compliance with 2002 Voting System Standards, as required by the Help America Vote Act. These standards prohibit software features that raise any doubt “that the software tested during the qualification process remains unchanged and retains its integrity.” We must ask, how did software containing
such an outrageous violation come to be certified, and what other flaws, yet to be uncovered, lurk in other certified systems?
There have been many significant problems – some resulting in lost votes – involving paperless voting machines produced by other vendors. Recognizing the intrinsic risks of paperless voting machines, the Association for Computing Machinery issued a statement saying that each voter should be able “to inspect a physical (e.g., paper) record to verify that his or her vote has been accurately cast and to serve as an independent check on the result.” Without voter-verified paper records of all the votes, and without routine spot audits of these records, no currently available voting system can be trusted. With such records, even when machines do not function correctly, each voter can make sure that his or her vote has been correctly recorded on paper.
Our democracy depends on our having secure, reliable, and accurate elections.
That’s for sure. No smart remarks this time.
Hopefully this will get media coverage beyond the good and brave people at OPED. Dobbs has been on a Voting Scandal rant as of late, maybe he would be interested. Brad and a few others have accomplished so much in the past year. I am certain that the evil bastards in power ignored the efforts not thinking that the truth would ever see the light of day. Ah, the price they might yet pay for underestimating “We the People”. It will be much harder to steal the November elections, which scares the hell out of me. These people can not afford to be voted out of power. They have demonstrated their total lack of regard for the rule of law and human life. If they start believing that a “fix” is not possible, we may find out what the inside of the recently built “Alien Detention Centers” look like. Oh well, as someone once said “Bring it on”. November might be this country’s last chance, 08 is too damn far down the road.
U.F.B. !
MEP – Comment # 1
The 2006 ballot box,.. we must get the fascists out,
2008 will be too late. (can’t argue with that !)
This reason is likely why they are making some hasty
moves in the Middle East. They see the writing on the
wall,.. after this election the jackboots of fascism
will be silenced.
oldturk
From your lips to God’s ear!
oldturk
Wish I could share your optimistic outlook. I don’t think these people will go out without a tussle and I don’t mean the electorial type. We know they piss on constitutional law at every opprotunity. It is encouraging that the ABA has finally grown balls and is crossing swords, however I can here the spin………….”They are trial lawyers,what do you expect”. What bothers me is the lack of outrage on the part of many of our fellow citizens. It pisses me off to no end that many people still have the attitude of “Oh, thats just politics”. Over the last year or so I decided to attempt the conversion of several Righties I know well. It was tough but I met with more success than I hoped for. However with each convert I noticed a common theme…..they had a hell of a time admitting to themselves they had been so fucking stupid. The depths of their denial is very deep indeed. It’s an ego thing. They want to be enlightened but they still seek to find something redeeming with this Admin. This country has millions of people who need some type of 12 Step program. It’s one thing to admit you supported and voted for a group of lying thieving bastards. It’s quiet another to admit that thousands of people have died because of your vote.
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I know a lot of you don’t give a rat’s ass, but I just want to point out that this issue is continuing to gain acceptance at a more “moderate” blog by the name of Daily Kos.
This story has not only been highly recommended — it has also been endorsed by a front-pager. And not only that — Hunter has given praise to this site (in response to my praise of the site):
I’ll take that as progress!
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Here’s the race to keep your eye on, to prove e-vote fraud beyond a doubt. Santorum is consistently about 10% behind Casey in Pa. For about a year. If Santorum wins 51%-49%…………
http://www.rawstory.com/news/20...poll_0724.html
Pa. is the state where exit polls said Kerry won by 9%, but the final “e-vote count” had Kerry winning by 3%. 6% swing…couple hundred thousand popular votes for Bush, that no one noticed. There were several states Kerry won, but Kerry won by way more in the exit polls. Add them all up, and it contributed to Bush’s supposed “popular vote” 3 million margin. You can’t take 8 million votes all from 1 state…that was the swing from the exit polls to the “e-vote” count…Kerry had a 5 million lead in the exit polls, Bush supposedly won by 3 million after counting all the e-vote machines. That’s an 8 million vote swing.
The electronic voting machine (EVM) watchdogs twenty years ago were saying what was said before a committee of congress recently (1988 Article).
You can shock the hell out of the EVM audience with these quotes from a 1988 official report:
(NIST Report 1988, bold added).
No one mentioned that twenty years is enough to have more than “suggested rules” which are admittedly inadequate. Which election war lords are ignoring anyway.
And who asked why one person certifies the machines no matter how many ITA companies claim to do the certification? Or who sets the standards of the lone ranger doing the testing (The Lonely Tester)?
Lou Dobbs, ya going to report on this???
For Big Dan: The G.O.P. simply miscalculated in Pennsylvania. But you’re right, the 6% discrepancy there between exit polls and tabulated votes is proof positive of what was going on in all the battleground states. It’s possible, of course, that a little Democrat hanky-panky in Philadelphia partially neutralized what went on elsewhere (Republicans have cried foul about voter fraud in Philly), without which Bush would have won the state.
Not enough attention has been paid to the fact that the 5-1/2% nationwide discrepancy was concentrated in the battleground states. What could be clearer evidence of a Rovian strategy than that? None of the explanations offered (“Republicans wouldn’t talk to exit pollsters” being the most common) deal with the obvious question, “If the exit polls were wrong, how come they were right in the non-battleground states?”
The only explanation is fraud. Logically, if the G.O.P. had planned to steal the election again, it wouldn’t make sense to steal votes in Utah, where Bush would win anyway, or in Massachusetts, where Kerry was a shoo-in. The only sensible approach would be to concentrate on the eleven key states, where a few percentage points worth of flipped votes would make the difference.
Mr. Mills. Another thing e-vote fraud is causing, is crazy Republicans in office, like that guy who compared global warmists to Nazi’s. I think guys like that are getting in office, unqualified nutcakes, all Republicans, who are backwards hicks. That is why you see all these crazy quotes from Republican Senators & Congressmen. Because these fringe lunatics would not be in office, if it wasn’t for fraud. How about that Republican Jon Stewart is covering, who has the slides about talking embryos saying, “Don’t kill me!”??? These hick lunatics should not be in office.
Hey Big Dan, Your comment got me to reflecting on buffoonism in the Republican party. I recalled the Senate debate over George Harold Carswell’s SCOTUS appointment. Some Dem senator, it might have been Sam Ervin, pointed out that Carswell was utterly mediocre in every respect, and Roman Hruska (yep, a repug from Nebraska, and an ethnic Czech to boot, I might point out – translate his name and he’s Mr. Pear) piped up: “Sure, and there are lots of mediocre people in America, and they deserve representation on the Supreme Court, too!” Ah, but that was another day and age, and Carswell was hooted down, and then Noxin was thrown out. *sighs nostalgically*
Actually, he might have said, “Most of the people in America are mediocre…” The current Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, when asked by a journalist if his arrogance might put off some voters, responded (in translation), “Hah! Ninety percent of all Czechs don’t know what the word arrogance means!”
Re:#12, Big Dan, I’m not sure that Sen Inhofe (R. Okla.)is crazy when he made that Nazi remark. Venal, certainly, but Okla is a big oil state,and he knows which side his bread is buttered on. If we checked out his campaign contributors I suspect we would find that most of his $$ come from oil companies.
Sorseress and Big Dan
It became clear to me, after reading both of your posts (#12, #15) that the TV series “Beverly Hillbillies” was prophetic.
Who wudda thunk it 8) … but stupidity having been given divine proportions in this regime … all I can say is “it could happen“!