Reply #53: Here's some quotes from Swidarski

[minvis]

This is from an article in a college newspaper in 2003.


Last month Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich authorized the State Board of Elections to proceed with the statewide installation of Diebold AccuVote-TS (touch screen) electronic voting machines.

Diebold Election Systems has come under heavy criticism for alleged security flaws in their machines, which critics say leave the machines open to tampering.

The Diebold paperless touch-screen voting systems were first deployed on a statewide basis in Georgia for the 2002 election. Despite trailing the Democratic incumbents in both races by 5 to 11 point margins the week before the race, Republican candidates were the winners of both the governor's mansion and a seat in the U.S. Senate, according to the Diebold-generated results. This marked the first time a Republican candidate won the Georgia gubernatorial race in 130 years.

Because the Diebold system is paperless and the counting of the votes is done out of sight, there is no way for a voter to know if his or her vote was counted correctly.

In July, a team of computer security experts from Johns Hopkins University and Rice University published a report on the software likely used in Diebold's AccuVote-TS model. The study prompted national debate over the security of electronic voting machines.

"We found some stunning flaws," says Avi Rubin, lead researcher on the report.

Diebold Election Systems President Thomas Swidarski defended his technology as the safest, "most advanced out there." He dismissed the Hopkins study as a "homework assignment" by a bunch of graduate students aimed as a "misguided, personal attack" on his company.

The study contained an analysis of unencrypted source code for an electronic voting system found on an unprotected FTP server maintained by Diebold.

The voting system examined by Rubin's team had "significant security flaws" and fell "far below even the most minimal security standards," according to the report.

Some of the biggest flaws cited: voters can cast multiple ballots with no built-in traceability; administrative functions can be performed by regular voters; and the system is open to tampering by insiders such as poll workers, software developers, and janitors.

The American Free Press asked Diebold spokesman Joe Richardson if the software code examined by Rubin's team had been used in Diebold machines during the Georgia 2002 election. "We are still looking into that," Richardson responded.



The rest of the article is linked below. You may have to sign in to see the other pages.

http://www.thequindecim.com/media/paper618/news/2003/10/15/Features/Controversy.Still.Surrounds.Electoral.Machines-528288.shtml?page=1

I'm afraid it's more of the same if this article is any indication.