Slashdot Mirror
Maryland Plans Code Review for Voting Software
asmithmd1 writes "We already knew Diebold software is insecure, now the Baltimore Sun is reporting that the Governor of Maryland has asked SAIC to review the software in Diebold voting machines. Diebold has graciously allowed SAIC access to their proprietary code. Why isn't this code open source by law?" In a related story, a trade show for closed-source electronic voting systems is doing their best to keep critics out. Update: 08/07 15:23 GMT by M : Diebold's website security is less than outstanding.
The Governor of Maryland is a Republican. You know what that means: it's time for Slashdot to argue against code review of voting software.
WAKE UP! This isn't about the stupid "hanging chads" everyone universally is sick of hearing about. Hanging chads seem like mere incompetence, not election fraud to me. So don't associate annoying stories we've all heard to the relevant stories we have not yet heard.
This story is about computerized voting and there is new hard evidence that certain computerized abuses occured in the 2000 election.
According to the NY Times best-selling book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a 2-year investigation of the 2000 election showed that we Americans did not even once hear about the real abuses during that election which were reported in the non-profit BBC (British Broadcasting Corp) but not even mentioned once by any of the media giants in the US (who happened to have contributed to the benefactor of the abuses).
WHAT WE DIDN'T HEAR IS THIS: Many thousands of voters were illegally disqualified for having committed crimes years in the future (2007, 2008, etc.) The vast majority of these disqualified voters were blacks and democrats. When this was reported to the authorities, they simply BLANKED OUT the future dates of crimes so these voters were still disqualified!
Since the abuses took place under the charge of the benefitting candidate's brother and the Supreme Court decision to stop the recount was decided by judges appointed by the benefitting candidate's father, this is much bigger news than the former president trying to weasel out of confessing to a marital affair.
Especially considering that the election was decided by less than 600 votes, the discover of many thousands of illegally disqualified voters based on FUTURE criminal convictions should be discussed and investigated at least as much as the "Monica" story.