Reply #9: State, 18 counties sued over voting machines

[stillcool]

By DAVID KRAVETS
The Associated Press


SAN FRANCISCO - A group of voters sued the state of California and 18 counties on Tuesday in a bid to prevent those counties from using Diebold Election Systems' electronic voting machines in November's general election.

The group Voter Action filed the lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court alleging that Diebold's touchscreen voting machines lack adequate security and aren't easily used by the disabled.

Machines made by Diebold Election Systems, based in Allen, Texas, are slated to be used in as many as 18 of California's 52 counties this November.

"We can't have trustworthy elections with Diebold's touch-screen voting machines,'' said Lowell Finley, an attorney representing about a dozen voters. "They are easily hacked.''

Last month, California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson gave conditional approval to use the disputed voting machine - the AccuVote-TSX. The Secretary of State's office said in December that the Diebold machines failed one of the 10 criteria he established for voting machines because the source coding, or computer language, on their memory cards was not reviewed by independent investigators. But McPherson authorized the machines as long as counties take security precautions, including keeping a written log of who has control of the machines' memory cards.

Originally published March 22, 2006
http://www.californianonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060322/NEWS06/603220330/1050