BREAKING
: Due to contractual
non-performance and security design issues, Leon County (Florida)
supervisor of elections Ion Sancho told Black Box Voting that he will
never again use Diebold in an election. He has requested funds to
replace the Diebold system from the county. He will issue a formal
announcement to this effect shortly. This comes on the heels of the
resignation of Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell, and the announcement that a
stockholder's class action suit has been filed against Diebold by Scott
& Scott.
Black Box Voting: http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Leon County Election Supervisor Ion
Sancho:
http://www.leonfl.org/elect/MeetTheSupervisor.htm
Finnish security expert Harri Hursti proved that Diebold lied to
Secretaries of State across the nation when Diebold claimed votes could
not be changed on the memory card.
A test election was run in Leon County Tusday Dec. 13 with a total of
eight ballots - six ballots voted "no" on a ballot question as
to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots,
cast by Dr. Herbert Thompson and by Harri Hursti voted "yes"
indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked.
At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by
Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A
"zero report" was run indicating zero votes on the memory
card. In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with
plus and minus votes.
The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The
standard Diebold-supplied "ender card" was run through as is
normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the
voting machine.
Correct results should have been:
Yes:2
No:6
However, just as Hursti had planned, the results tape read:
Yes:7
No:1
The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into
the GEMS central tabulator. The central tabulator is the "mother
ship" that pulls in all votes from voting machines. The results in
the central tabulator read:
Yes:7
No:1
This exploit, accomplished without being given any password and with the
same level of access given thousands of poll workers across the USA,
showed that the votes themselves were changed in a one-step process.
This hack would not be detected in any normal canvassing procedure, and
it required only a single a credit-card sized memory card.
On Oct. 17, 2005 Diebold Elections Systems Research and Development
chief Pat Green specifically told the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) board of
elections that votes cannot be changed using only a memory card.
According to Public Records responses obtained by Black Box Voting in
response to our requests shows that Diebold promulgated this
misrepresentation to as many as 800 state and local elections officials.
In other news, a stockholder suit was filed today against Diebold by the
law offices of Scott and Scott:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-13-2005/0004233556&EDATE=
Diebold CEO resigns: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=175001748
# # # # #
The original research of Black Box Voting and its founder, Bev Harris,
has been covered by ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC,
CNN, and Fox TV national news, as well as by the New York Times, Time
Magazine, and most other major news outlets in the U.S.
Black Box Voting
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