Former Maryland delegate gets purported Diebold code

Baltimore Sun ^ | October 20, 2006 | Melissa Harris

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Diebold Election Systems Inc. expressed alarm and state election officials contacted the FBI yesterday after a former legislator received an anonymous package containing what appears to be the computer code that ran Maryland's polls in 2004.

Cheryl C. Kagan, a longtime critic of Maryland's elections chief, says the fact that the computer disks were sent to her - along with an unsigned note criticizing the management of the state elections board - demonstrates that Maryland's voting system faces grave security threats.

spokesman for Diebold, which manufactures the state's touch-screen voting machines, said the company is treating the software Kagan received as "stolen" and not as "picked up" at the State Board of Elections, as the anonymous note claimed. Lawyers for the company are seeking its return.

....Kagan, a former state Democratic delegate from Montgomery County who is now executive director of the Carl M. Freeman Foundation, said the disks were delivered to her office Wednesday.

An accompanying letter refers to the State Board of Elections and calls Kagan "the proud recipient of an 'abandoned baby Diebold source code' right from SBE accidentally picked up in this envelope, right in plain view at SBE. ... You have the software because you are a credible person who can save the state from itself. You must alert the media and save democracy."

[ProtectOurFreedom]

This doesn't make any sense. Why in the world was source code at the State Board of Elections? If the state needed to certify the security measures at the source level, then Diebold would have required it be performed in secure facilities in a Diebold building. This smells more like an insider at Diebold sending out the source.

Is this the end for electronic voting?

[ecomcon]

Track it down, and we will find Democrat operatives involved.

[ecomcon]

Probably Kagan.

[cinives]

If you read the article, the disks came from independent testing companies, not from Diebold.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

....You must alert the media ...

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr REPUBLICAN is ahead in the polls.

The Dems are doing what Dems do.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Still, what is with their security and escrow measures? And why was source at the board of elections? And why wasn't Diebold monitoring the security measures in effect at the independent testing agency. The whole things smells regardless.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

More:

Ross Goldstein, the state's deputy elections administrator, said Maryland now uses version 4.6 and that the public should be confident that their votes are secure.

The disks contain "nothing that's being used in this election," Goldstein said.

Diebold marketing director Mark Radke said the company is investigating the chain of custody of the disks and is asking its testing companies to pull their logs.

"These disks contain codes used for testing purposes," Radke said. "They were shipped from the testing authority. Diebold was never in the chain of custody."

Older versions of Diebold's computer code have long been in public circulation, including the copy discovered by Rubin.

___________________________

But it makes a headline and fodder for the drive-by media.

[Weep-o-crat Hunter]

Some tratoros scum at the company! Its no good to let this code out to the MMM - itll turn into the wrong kind of story. What if the code is how to win elections???

[Hendrix]

It all boils down to this people. The democrats have a much harder time stuffing ballot boxes with the computer system than they do with punch cards and the other more primitive voting systems, so the democrats want to discredit the computer system so that they can go back to the old system which is much easier to cheat with. It is as simple as that.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

And with races being close, they're going to play this card for all their worth.

[Pete]

On the face of it, this seems like insurance in case the Dems lose so they can claim voter fraud.

Maryland already has enough problems with precinct judges showing up.

[Hendrix]

I'm sure the democrats are pissed at the democrat Florida volunteers who were in charge of punching all the cards down in Flordia during the Bush/Gore election who did not do it right and left a lot of hanging chads, etc. My bet is that the volunteers were trying to punch several cards at once and that is why they did not punch cleanly.

[nina0113]

Is this the end for electronic voting?

I'd be fine with that - anybody to dumb to use a lever machine is also too dumb to vote.

[Retired Chemist]

Wasn't it Democrats who demanded idiot proof voting machines?

[VeniVidiVici]

The democrats have a much harder time stuffing ballot boxes with the computer system than they do with punch cards and the other more primitive voting systems

And looked at from another angle, what better way to throw the Republic into turmoil than to cast doubt on the election process itself.

Can't figure out if it's foreign terrorists or those of the domestic stripe (Democrats).

[DBrow]

"This smells more like an insider at Diebold sending out the source. "

Since this is an old version, and a version only used for test, and is not controlled or secret, it's far more likely that a democrat mailed it to himself and called a press conference.

Electronic voting problems will disappear from the news once a version comes out that CAN be used to steal elections. It's just too hard withe the current technology, and returning power to the voters is just too frightening for (some) to consider.

[gb63]

The source code used for programming the system in the machine doesn't mean a thing. It doesn't really matter how many people know the code. The source code is compiled for runtime. There are many encryption programs available for which all source is in the public domain. Knowing the source code means nothing. The only thing this story proves is...people who don't learn some computer fundamentals can easily be provoked by others.

[Hendrix]

"Wasn't it Democrats who demanded idiot proof voting machines?"

No. It is true that they want it idiot proof for all the homeless people they pay to vote democrat, but they also want it easy to sit in a back room and stuff ballot boxes. With a computer, it is harder to do that and it may even leave a trace (there may be some hidden code that would detect it). With a paper ballot, the democrats can sit in a back room and punch away with no trace.

[right-wingin_It]

ping