Diebold machines secretly re-certified in CALIF.

You like political conspiracies? Well, here's one for you: The Secretary of State of California (appointed, not elected), has done a stunning about-face by re-certifying the previously uncertified Diebold election machines, just months short of what will be a hard-fought election in California.

In 2004, when it was revealed that Diebold had installed illegal software updates on their voting machines, the Diebold machines were deemed not suitable or trustworthy for free and fair elections. See, there's a law that once a voting machine is certified, there can be no last-minute fiddling with the software. No updates that weren't themselves deemed kosher by the election commission. But that's exactly what Diebold did back in '04. A few months before an important statewide election, a "mystery update" was run on all the voting machines installed. The federal Independent Testing Authority immediately senses something fishy, and by bringing evidence to the state authority, had the machines decertified. This might be part of the reason the Republican administration's propositions took such a terrible beating last year. Who knows what might have happened in that election had those "updated" machines been put in place?

So yesterday, Sec'y of State McPherson quietly, announced that those same machines were now good to go after a "hack test" revealed that an entire election could have its results reversed by a hacker exploiting one line of interpreted code - without a trace.

See, although Diebold had appealed to have their machines put back in service, a test by the ITA was required before that could happen. The test would have to show that there was no funny business going on with the voting machines' software. Well, McPherson didn't want to wait for the results of the ITA test, and went ahead with the recertification.

Remember, the coming election in California is considered crucial to the continued preservation of the current administration's control of congress. Further, efforts by the California Secretary of State to redistrict areas of California that vote heavily Democratic will be on November's ballot. This election is a must-win if the people in power are going to maintain their strangle-hold on government. Interesting that this is where (and when) there would be shenanigans regarding crooked voting machines.

An associate of mine thinks that this is much ado about nothing. What's the problem, after all, with Republicans making the voting machines, redistricting heavily Democratic districts? It's not like they'd do anything crooked. Remember, this is the state that gave us that great war hero and patriot "Duke" Cunningham, who turned out to be a war profiteer and took money from military contractors to have substandard gear purchased by the Department of Defense.

Thing is, despite all the GOP/Dem references in this story, it's really not at all about partisan politics. It's about the people in power doing anything required to hold on to that power. It shows just how afraid the people who have seized power in this country are of something as basic as a fair election. They're all for elections in the Middle East (as long as the right parties get elected), but God forbid there should be a free election in California. I'm thinking that the operations of US elections is something that we can keep from being outsourced to private industry. Don't you think?

I still cannot believe they are being used again after the stink of '04. Another show that it is no longer 'We the people'.

Good post.

California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson is a Republican, nominated by Schwarzenegger, after scandal-ridden Kevin Shelley resigned from the post.

This article seems to indicate they believe the only threat to be if someone has physical access to the machine, therefore their solution is to put more security at voting sites.

Any immediate worries can be addressed by ensuring there is strict security during voting, the analysts said.

McPherson said the review persuaded him to authorize Diebold's Optical Scan and Touch-Screen voting systems, as long as counties take additional security precautions, including resetting the programmed code on the machines and keeping a written log of who has control of the memory cards.

If that's the case, I still think they need to fix any flaws in the system. However, is that really the case? Is there an additional flaw that allows remote access into the system?

Actually, I think Diebold needs to be completely disqualified from any election simply for the fact that its CEO, Wally O'Dell promised to help deliver a state to a particular candidate. He is not the CEO anymore, however. I don't know that that changes anything.

If only this little secret recertification was as bad as the voting machine scandal gets, but there's much, much more to it.

Anyone out there who cares about the cause of freedom or who believes in the principles upon which the United States was founded should take a few minutes, Google the words "diebold voting machines" or "computer voting" and have a look at what's going on.

Even if you throw out 90 percent of what you find as being Internet hogwash, there's plenty of solid, verifiable evidence that there is a concerted effort being made to turn our nation into a Stalin-esque authoritarian state where our votes might as well be burned because they're certainly not going to be counted.

The Open Voting Consortium is attempting to create open source voting machines that can be inspected by everyone to ensure security. They say they need to raise $1.5 Million to build and certify their system. Not sure why they need that much money. In fact, I suspect I could make a working model of a secure system that would run on a standard computer for just the cost of the machines. Why isn't that being done? Maybe because they don't want a secure system.

I consider any type of machine as the best tool for voting control not so much by the political candidates but the ones working behind the scenes. Nobody can prove that machines are fixed.

They shoved them to us the voters as is nothing we can do about it.

As a Californian I'm very concerned by this. It seems things like this are quite blatant, even brazen, lately. There's little effort to conceal much of the controversial dealings that go on these days at all levels of government - federal, state, and local - compared to the good old days when congressional stonewalling and mysteriously missing documents were par for the course. Now they just do stuff, let us find out, and basically say they don't care, or for us to trust them (when they respond at all). It almost feels like they are more assured of their ability to exercise such authority than in the past, or as if they feel emboldened somehow. That goes for many members of all political parties, and all ethical leanings. I don't want the nature of this particular issue to inspire the idea that I'm singling out Republicans.

"Have faith in God that the pregnant women won't die in childbirth, pay no mind to the fact that the docs say she will lose her life if she tries to deliver."

"Have faith in God, that he will give us victory over the war against the evil terrorists"

"Have faith in God, that he will multiply that minimum wage job into something that will pay the rent and put food on the table!!"


"What??? Have faith that I will actually win the next election.....NEVER!!!"


Too bad we couldn't just convince the whole country to just not vote and catch them!! hey, no one voted, and yet the republicans managed to get 100,000 votes. how can this be!!"

I'm afraid it might be in their best interest to just have faith in that God that they've been trying to shove down our throats and well, go out of their way to convince the people the next few elections are valid and all measures have been taken to assure the accuracy.
or, they might find themselves looking to their God for deliverance from the angry masses....

we can't take another four years of having half the population thinking the vote was rigged, or stolen, or just wasn't the expression of the american people.