Diebold says its voting machines are bulletproof. (Oct 19, 2005 article )

News
Knocking the Vote
Diebold says its voting machines are bulletproof. Hackers say otherwise.
By James Renner

Published: Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Ion Sancho wants to get things right this time. As supervisor of elections for Leon County, Florida, he stood at the epicenter of the election fiasco of 2000. Voter confidence, he realizes, is paramount. That's why he's let a computer hacker have a go at one of his new machines.


The apparatus in question is the Accuvote 2000 Optical Scan, a boxlike computer that reads ballots as they are inserted. The data is collected and stored on a memory card that's later uploaded into a central tabulator. Diebold, the machine's Canton-based manufacturer, claims that the memory cards cannot be altered to influence votes. Sancho figured he'd find out for himself.

In May, he gave Dr. Herbert Thompson access to an Accuvote 2000. As hackers go, Thompson doesn't quite fit the mold of a pasty-faced kid playing Warcraft in Mom's basement: He's the chief strategist at Security Innovation, a Florida tester of online security for IBM, Microsoft, Google, and other large businesses and government agencies. If anyone can uncover a problem, it's this guy.

But not even Thompson could have expected this: He was able to manipulate a memory card using homemade devices. When he inserted it into the Diebold machine, 10,000 votes were awarded to one candidate, and the Accuvote detected no sign of fraud.

http://www.clevescene.com/Issues/2005-10-19/news/news.html

hack proof? That's the question, and I think it has been answered.

So I suppose we should vote by firing small arms onto the old optical scanner ballot sheets.

It would add such a nice Texian flair to the elections down here.

...to test the Diebold theory. Not only with my .410, but with my keyboard as well.

Damn, how come computer experts are having all the fun? Let me at one of those vote stealing idiot boxes.

Hey, kster! Whatcha' think of this new slogan: Stolection 2004

I may borrow it some time. It sounds like whats been happening with the elections, (stolections - selections)

:evilgrin: and then we will know for sure.

thats about all they will be good for.

and you'll have a hacked machine.

corporations have no buiness counting votes in a democracy, nor does secret vote counting on proprietary software have any place in a democracy.