VOTE: Diebold Claims 2003 Source Code Study Innacurate

In a 2003 report by Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at John Hopkins University, Rubin concluded that Diebold was using an outdated, hacked encryption key. But David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold contended that the study was based on outdated, 2-year old code that was never used in an election. Diebold Election Systems is one of three companies that provided updated systems for the controversial 2004 election.



Despite this report, there are still many questions about the recent elections, including widespread reports of miscounts, glitches, and mistakenly added votes. In addition many lawsuits have now been filed and are likely to cause recounts in several counties of several states.


Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Diebold voting machines contain 'stunning security hole'
The Diebold Factor

[edit on 11-16-2004 by Zion Mainframe]

[edit on 16-11-2004 by TrueAmerican]

The major issue people are having with Diebold machines in specific and electronic voting in general is that very few have an actual tracable paper trail.

Im not talking about matching the vote to the person, Im talking about guarenteeing that the vote cast is the same as the vote counted. As a programmer, I can assure you that there are an infinate number of methods in which I can change the voting from within the application without anyone ever knowing or being able to find out. This is why an electronic count without a paper trail, which many of the states which used the Diebold machines are relying on, is completely unreliable.

With paper votes, the ballot boxes are padlocked and sealed between the polling stations and the counting houses. With electronic votes, all the votes are stored on little chips not much bigger than your thumbnail, and in a few cases all of these for some counties were in the hands of single individuals, who could easily switch them out for another chip.

What is needed is a safe and secure papertrail. Something that gets printed out infront of the user, on thermal paper or something, something the user can check and make sure that the vote being cast is the one they meant, and something that can be matched vote for vote against hte electronic versions when a recount is demanded or irregularities are found.

There are a huge number of issues with the Diebold machines in specific, but why is voting being placed in the private domain anyway? Shouldnt the voting applications be placed in the public domain, so anyone can look at the source code to these applications if they so desire? Wouldnt you want to know exactly how these black boxes work? I do.