Date: December 14, 2005 12:42:18 AM
MST
Subject:
Devastating voting machine hack; Leon County
dumps Diebold
BREAKING : Due to contractual non-performance
and security design issues, Leon County
(Florida)
supervisor of elections Ion Sancho told Black
Box Voting that he will never again use Diebold
in an
election. He has requested funds to replace the
Diebold system from the county. He will issue a
formal
announcement to this effect shortly. This comes
on the heels of the resignation of Diebold CEO
Wally
O'Dell, and the announcement that a
stockholder's class action suit has been filed
against Diebold by
Scott & Scott.
Black Box Voting: http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Leon County Election Supervisor Ion Sancho:
http://www.leonfl.org/elect/MeetTheSupervisor.htm
Finnish security expert Harri Hursti proved that
Diebold lied to Secretaries of State across the
nation when
Diebold claimed votes could not be changed on
the memory card.
A test election was run in Leon County Tusday
Dec. 13 with a total of eight ballots - six
ballots voted "no" on a ballot
question as to whether Diebold voting machines
can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr.
Herbert
Thompson and by Harri Hursti voted "yes"
indicating a belief that the Diebold machines
could be hacked.
At the beginning of the test election the memory
card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted
into an
Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A "zero
report" was run indicating zero votes on the
memory card.
In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the
memory card with plus and minus votes.
The eight ballots were run through the optical
scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied
"ender card"
was run through as is normal procedure ending
the election. A results tape was run from the
voting machine.
Correct results should have been:
Yes:2
No:6
However, just as Hursti had planned, the results
tape read:
Yes:7
No:1
The results were then uploaded from the optical
scan voting machine into the GEMS central
tabulator.
The central tabulator is the "mother ship" that
pulls in all votes from voting machines. The
results in the
central tabulator read:
Yes:7
No:1
This exploit, accomplished without being
given any password and with the same level of
access given
thousands of poll workers across the USA, showed
that the votes themselves were changed in a
one-step
process. This hack would not be detected in any
normal canvassing procedure, and it required
only a single
a credit-card sized memory card.
On Oct. 17, 2005 Diebold Elections Systems
Research and Development chief Pat Green
specifically told the
Cuyahoga County (Ohio) board of elections that
votes cannot be changed using only a memory
card.
Video of Pat Green, Cuyahoga County
According to Public Records responses obtained
by Black Box Voting in response to our requests
shows that
Diebold promulgated this misrepresentation to as
many as 800 state and local elections officials.
In other news, a stockholder suit was filed
today against Diebold by the law offices of
Scott and Scott:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-13-2005/0004233556&EDATE=
Diebold CEO resigns: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=175001748
