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Diebold Threatens Wary Voting Clerk
An anonymous reader writes "From the Salt Lake Tribune: a wary county clerk called in BlackBoxVoting.org to test the integrity of Diebold voting fraud machines, part of a recent $27 million statewide purchase (to make sure that only the "Right" candidates win). Diebold goon says machines are now jinxed and it may cost up to $40,000 to fly in a company witch-doctor to make sure there were no warranty violations. Since EVERY SINGLE VOTER who uses these machines is a potential hacker looking to alter election results, why is Diebold so concerned? "
I'd certainly be concerned if I sent a machine out into the wild, a 3rd party took a look at it, and now it may not be functioning properly.
If I were that election commissioner, my concern would be that all the Diebold "engineer" they send is going to install is the latest back door to the machine.
However if I were one of the Bush people my concern would be to send over someone to talk to that election commissioner, maybe bring his youngest daugther home from kindergarden or someting.
On March 18, Black Box Voting released the first part of findings from an examination of the Diebold TSx touch-screen machines in Emery County, Utah.
Diebold has responded. Harri Hursti and also Security Innovation Inc. have rebutted Diebold's initial explanation. Diebold then came up with a new explanation, while trying to maneuver Emery County's elections chief into resigning.
Bruce Funk, the elected official who has run elections in Emery County for 23 years, noticed a critical shortage in flash memory/storage in seven of his 40 brand new Diebold machines. He arranged for an independent evaluation, a right granted to Utah county officials in the Diebold contract. Black Box Voting secured the services of Harri Hursti and also Security Innovation, Inc. for the Emery County evaluation.
The initial assessment was not encouraging: The memory was so low it appeared likely to compromise elections held on the affected machines, and the most likely explanations were all pretty bad: 1) Different programs on the machines 2) Data already residing on the machines from use elsewhere 3) Flash memory near the end of its life cycle.
1. Diebold claims low memory due to a variation in fonts
According to the Deseret Morning News, Diebold spokesman David Bear claimed that the critical shortage in memory was due to different fonts loaded on certain machines.
"Spokesman David Bear said that some of the machines were programmed with more font options than other machines, which is accounting for most of the discrepancy in available memory, although the types of tests run on the machines before shipping could also take up memory.
Diebold has not explained why some machines would have different fonts than others.
Actually, the memory discrepancies were as large as 20MB, and the low memory triggered text on the TSx machine to flip to RED, clearly an alert that there was a problem. Hursti and Security Innovation cast doubt on the font explanation:
Hursti: "Fonts, which there are only few, can explain few 100 kilobytes [each] at the most, not 20 meg we have."
Security Innovation, Inc.: "I went into the tool that builds Windows CE and after adding ALL of the fonts that it contains they *totaled* to 4 megs. Harri is right in that each font individually was small with the largest being a meg but most being like 30k-60k. There exists the possibility that they created a custom font but I don't know why...The only one that's any where near big enough (22meg) is a UNICODE one that can represent things like Japanese characters, Chinese characters.
(Note that Emery County Utah does not have a Japanese/Chinese population sufficient to warrant such special fonts, and even if it did, if such fonts use up memory to the extent that machines experience critical storage problems, that is a significant defect. The existence of Asian language fonts on Utah machines would be consistent with taking delivery on machines previously used in California.)
2. New Diebold explanation: "There is an A, B, and C version"
On Monday Mar. 27, Diebold attended a meeting in Emery County and here they claimed there were actually several versions delivered to Utah. Now, bear in mind that all are the TSx 4.6.4, but in this tape recorded meeting, Diebold stated that within this there is an A, B, and C version.
The main question, of course, is:
Is it the A, B, or the C version that is the certified version?
In the mean time, Diebold is hoping Bruce Funk will hurry up and resign
Diebold's immediate response to Funk's decision to have his machines independently tested was to threaten to charge over $1,200 to check the machines tested to make sure they were suitable for elections.
This brings to mind the question -- why did Diebold deliver machines with memory
Please remember that this question came up as part of an official investigation into alleged sexual harrassment and violent rape committed by Clinton when he was Governor of Arkansas. If he had been Republican, the feminists and Democrats would have absolutely crucified him, and would not have cared one whit about how "personal" the matter was. Plenty of Republicans have been hounded out of office for less (eg Senator Packwood.)
I would also point out that adultery is not considered a "personal" matter by government agencies that require a security clearance, because of the risk of blackmail. Clinton would not qualify to be a janitor in the CIA headquarters building, due to his sexual history.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Lets face it. The chances that these machines will be tampered with in the field are small. There is a much greater chance the machines will be tampered at Diebold. Switching even one vote out of 10,000 can sway an election from one party to the next. Since Deibold has pledged allegience to the republican party it seems to me the democrats should take apart the code bit by bit to see that random votes for democrats aren't switched to the republicans.
During the last two elections there were widespread differences between exit polling and the actual vote. If the vote was being monitored by the UN in any other country this would be the number one flag that something fishy is going on.
evil is as evil does
"If so I can certainly understand why he would feel that Diebold is the best outfit for the job, given the company's notorious Republican-friendly past statements."
Since Idaho wouldn't vote for jesus if he ran as a democrat this is probably just payback to diebold. A nice fat govt contract to say "thank you for what you did for us in Ohio".
evil is as evil does