Voting Machine Controversy
Walden O'Dell, the former CEO of Diebold, Inc., sent a fundraising letter to Republicans on August 14, 2003, which said that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Diebold is one of three companies which sells touch-screen voting machines. Diebold machines have no paper printout to verify votes or conduct recounts. (VerifiedVoting.org tracks efforts by the states to institute a paper verification system for all voting machines.)
O'Dell himself attended a strategy meeting at Bush's ranch with wealthy Bush benefactors in August of 2003.
Subsequently, there were widespread allegations of voting machine malfunctions, in Ohio and elsewhere.
Mark Crispin Miller discussed the issue in his book, Fooled Again. A summary of his thesis is available here.
Paul Craig Roberts raised the question of whether the 2004 elections were fixed here, as did Fitrakis, Rosenfeld and Wasserman, here.
For Matt Taibbi's story on the issue, click here.
On July 21, 2005, Harper's Magazine hosted a forum on irregularities in the 2004 election, summarized here.
Congressman John Conyers published a report on voting irregularities in Ohio, summarized here.
The GAO also published a report on difficulties with touch-screen voting machines, published here.
With that background, the account of Harri Hursti's test of Diebold machines described here explains how he was able to change the vote count in Diebold machines without leaving a trace, and without entering the machine, using a simple computer hacker's technique.
Diebold is one of three companies which sells touch-screen voting machines. Diebold machines have no paper printout to verify votes or conduct recounts. (VerifiedVoting.org tracks efforts by the states to institute a paper verification system for all voting machines.)
O'Dell himself attended a strategy meeting at Bush's ranch with wealthy Bush benefactors in August of 2003.
Subsequently, there were widespread allegations of voting machine malfunctions, in Ohio and elsewhere.
Mark Crispin Miller discussed the issue in his book, Fooled Again. A summary of his thesis is available here.
Paul Craig Roberts raised the question of whether the 2004 elections were fixed here, as did Fitrakis, Rosenfeld and Wasserman, here.
For Matt Taibbi's story on the issue, click here.
On July 21, 2005, Harper's Magazine hosted a forum on irregularities in the 2004 election, summarized here.
Congressman John Conyers published a report on voting irregularities in Ohio, summarized here.
The GAO also published a report on difficulties with touch-screen voting machines, published here.
With that background, the account of Harri Hursti's test of Diebold machines described here explains how he was able to change the vote count in Diebold machines without leaving a trace, and without entering the machine, using a simple computer hacker's technique.
...The Hursti hack reveals only one vulnerability in an almost unlimited number of potential flaws or vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems (both op-scans and DREs). However, the Hursti hack is individually significant because the flaw it exposed is a planned vulnerability in the system, not something that is accidentally there. It had to be PUT there (programmed) on purpose. For Diebold to claim innocence about this would be absurd. It would be like saying you didn't know your garage had a door while you were standing there holding the garage door opener. Or, because this security vulnerability is so huge, it would more accurately be like saying you didn't know your house had a garage at all!!
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