Concerning those fishy Diebold voting machines...

[baby_bear]

I know this topic has had coverage here in DU, but I just ran across this article from Thursday's Seattle Times. I hope every city and county takes this as seriously as is being done here.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001744989_harris25m.html

<snip>

Dean Logan, who became (King County's) director of records, elections and licensing services this month, said yesterday he has tightened security by restricting employee access to a key election software program and removing other software from the elections computer. Logan also said he will ask for a formal response by Diebold Election Systems to claims that the company's vote-counting systems may be vulnerable to tampering.

"We're going to take it extremely seriously because we want to be sure that voters are confident that their votes are counted and counted as they intended them to be counted," Logan said. "If there are problems with the software, we're going to get to the bottom of that."

Logan said he decided election security was a "legitimate issue" after internal company e-mail was posted on the Internet and discussed in a Salon.com article Monday.

The memos appeared to support reports by Renton Web journalist and author Bev Harris that election results on Diebold's GEMS software could be altered by someone using its underlying Microsoft Access software without leaving a trace in the GEMS audit log. "Right now you can open GEMS' .mdb file with MS-Access, and alter its contents. That includes the audit log," wrote Ken Clark, an employee of Diebold Election Systems, in an October 2001 e-mail.

Harris said more than 100 memos indicate software changes have been made to Diebold election devices in various jurisdictions without the legally required review by independent testing authorities.
...
Harris' Web site was shut down by her Internet service provider late Tuesday after a Diebold attorney said she was violating the company's copyright by posting a link to a New Zealand site that contained 15,000 pieces of Diebold e-mail. Harris earlier removed Diebold e-mail from her site, www.blackboxvoting.org, in response to an earlier legal threat by the company.

</snip>

There's actually much more to the article. I am very concerned about this, especially with the articles lately about Diebold's CEO Walden O'Dell being a chief fundraiser for Bush. (See the DU thread in LBN at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=135659 and an article at http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1064655398128350.xml.) Are the Repugs so desperate as to fix the 2004 election all over the country? Florida's not enough I guess.


s_m

[Cha]

1. That looks encouraging! Thanks, sierra_moon!