The Diebold Bombshell

The penalities for election fraud, especially on an organized massive scale, like we have seen, should be punishable with 20 years imprisonment and a $1,000,000 fine. They should never be allowed to work in politics or campaigns of any kind ever again.

We need to make it crystal clear to people who are in the business of stealing elections that we will not tolerate it, and that they will be lucky if the law gets to them before the voters do.

The Diebold Bombshell: (full Article)

Most computer scientists have long viewed Diebold as the poster child for all that is wrong with touch screen voting machines. But we never imagined that Diebold would be as irresponsible and incompetent as they have turned out to be.

Recently, computer security expert Harri Hursti revealed serious security vulnerabilities in Diebold's software. According to Michael Shamos, a computer scientist and voting system examiner in Pennsylvania, 'It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system.'

Even more shockingly, we learned recently that Diebold and the State of Maryland had been aware of these vulnerabilities for at least two years. They were documented in analysis, commissioned by Maryland and
conducted by RABA Technologies, published in January 2004.

For over two years, Diebold has chosen not to fix the security holes, and Maryland has chosen not to alert other states or national officials about these problems.

Basically, Diebold included a 'back door' in its software, allowing anyone to change or modify the software. There are no technical safeguards in place to ensure that only authorized people can make changes.

A malicious individual with access to a voting machine could rig the software without being detected. Worse yet, if the attacker rigged the machine used to compute the totals for some precinct, he or she could alter the results of that precinct. The only fix the RABA authors suggested was to warn people that manipulating an election is against
the law.