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Diebold Inc. saw great potential in the modernization of elections equipment. Now, analysts say, executives may be angling for ways to dump its e-voting subsidiary that's widely seen as tarnishing the company's reputation. Though Diebold Election Systems - the company's smallest business segment - has shown growth and profit, it's faced persistent criticism over the reliability and security of its touch-screen voting machines. About 150,000 of its touch-screen or optical scan systems were used in 34 states in last November's election. The criticism is particularly jarring for a nearly 150-year-old company whose primary focus has long been safes and automated...

Imagine if all it took to get inside widely-used Diebold electronic voting machines--perhaps with malicious intentions, such as installing tally-altering software on its memory card--was a photograph of the key to the system's physical lock. Thanks to a little help from the e-voting outfit itself, it may actually be that simple, a security researcher from Princeton University suggested this week. According to J. Alex Halderman, a computer science PhD student, a picture of the key published at Diebold's online store was a veritable blueprint for filing down ordinary hardware-store cabinet keys to an identical shape. Ross Kinard of the site...

"...These machines must go. There is no way to know if one's vote is accurately accounted for..."

Like claims the U.S. was responsible for 9/11 and Republicans were fixing gas prices, the media promoted the left-wing electronic vote-rigging conspiracy. Now that the votes have been cast and counted, Republicans lost, and the silence of the national media has been deafening. The idea was that somehow the company Diebold had programmed the machines to let Republicans win. The theory, perpetuated by left-wingers posting on Daily Kos and The Huffington Post and Bev Harris’ book, “Black Box Voting,” was embraced by all three broadcast networks, as well as CNN and MSNBC. Following Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) defeat in 2004,...

"He had an absolute conniption because it's supposed to be in pen," said Pantelakos-Barstow, adding the voter cast a new ballot, while "ranting and raving that it was a Diebold machine." The ward moderator said the voter left, but soon returned to report AccuVote machines are manufactured by Diebold, before loudly complaining that the machines are unreliable and "caused elections to be lost,"

History was made this week! For the first time in four election cycles, Democrats are not attacking the Diebold Corp. the day after the election, accusing it of rigging its voting machines. I guess Diebold has finally been vindicated. So the left won the House and also Nicaragua. They've had a good week. At least they don't have their finger on the atom bomb yet. Democrats support surrender in Iraq, higher taxes and the impeachment of President Bush. They just won an election by pretending to be against all three. Jon Tester, Bob Casey Jr., Heath Shuler, possibly Jim Webb...

I am just wondering: if this election had gone our way, right now you would have every Democrat pundit in the nation and every Democrat lawyer in the nation on cable and network news shows throwing doubt about results because of the voting machines and "Diebold". What do you see today instead? A gloating 'rat party, and Republicans--dazed--some fighting against each other, some wondering how to get out of this mess...BUT NO ONE is standing on a street corner boo-hooing and trying to BLAME THE OTHER PARTY FOR 'FIXING THE VOTE'. Of course in some races, there is voter fraud:...

SmartMetric Inc., manufacturer and marketer of tamper-proof identity cards, says it has the solution to yesterday's story that reported possible voting fraud due to the mysterious disappearance of 12 voter smart cards in Shelby County, Tennessee. The cards, used to activate electronic voting machines, were reported missing at Bishop Byrne High School, a Memphis, Tennessee polling place. Local authorities expressed concern that someone in possession of a smartcard could use 'off the shelf equipment' [equipment that reprograms the card] and alter it, enabling it to be used multiple times to cast multiple votes. SmartMetric says its card includes a fingerprint...

Maryland is on track to repeat the chaos of the 2000 election in Florida. Even without "butterfly" ballots and hanging chads, Maryland faces several elections-related problems that threaten the accuracy and promptness of Tuesday's results. Uncertainty looms about the state's electronic voter rolls, the number and training of poll workers, and anticipated challenges in the aftermath of Election Day.

I strongly agree with number 2 and 3 comments currently at the top of the Political Action Goals. There are always individual cases of fraud in an election, but Mark Crispin Miller claims widespread fraud in 2004 that cost Kerry the election. "Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 election and why they'll steal the next one too (unless we stop them" is his book. He says the use of the Diebolt computer voting machines and the use of large number of evangelicals to man polling booths created widespread electoral fraud, not just in Ohio. Three states have now...

WASHINGTON -- HBO rejected a call by Diebold Election Systems to pull the documentary "Hacking Democracy" from its schedule or air company disclaimers questioning the accuracy of film. In a letter to HBO chairman and CEO Chris Albrecht, Diebold seeks to have 30-second disclaimers before, after and during the docu that is critical of the computerized election systems that are used in most precincts nationwide. The film is scheduled to air Thursday. HBO spokesman Jeff Cusson said the company "stands by our film and has no intention of withdrawing the film from its schedule."

"Despite a generally buoyant Democratic Party nationally," the New York Times reports, "there are worries among Democratic strategists in some states that blacks may not turn up at the polls in big enough numbers because of disillusionment over past shenanigans." What shenanigans would those be? The paper explains: "This notion that elections are stolen and that elections are rigged is so common in the public sphere that we're having to go out of our way to counter them this year," said Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist. . . . Democrats' worries are backed up by a Pew Research Center report...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 — New electronic voting machines have arrived in Yolo County, Calif., but there is one hitch: the audio program for the visually impaired in some of them works only in Vietnamese. “Talk about panic,” said Freddy Oakley, the county’s top election official. “I’ve got gray-haired ladies as poll workers standing around looking stunned.” As dozens of states are enforcing new voter registration laws and switching to paperless electronic voting systems, officials across the country are bracing for an Election Day with long lines and heightened confusion, followed by an increase in the number of contested results. In...

<p>FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ON NOT CAPTURING BIN LADEN: 'At least I tried. That's the difference between me and some, including all the right wingers. They ridicule me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed'...</p>

Like other computer scientists who have studied Diebold voting machines, we were surprised at the apparent carelessness of Diebold’s security design. It can be hard to convey this to nonexperts, because the examples are technical. To security practitioners, the use of a fixed, unchangeable encryption key and the blind acceptance of every software update offered on removable storage are rookie mistakes; but nonexperts have trouble appreciating this. Here is an example that anybody, expert or not, can appreciate: The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes,...

Remember just a few weeks ago when all the polls were showing Democrats winning landlslide victories? The DUmmies were already breaking out their champagne bottles to celebrate in preparation for the Bush impeachment and the purge trials of the Republicans. However, in recent days, the polls show that the races are starting to tighten up. This can be expected since all midsummer polls are WORTHLESS. In the middle of the summer, people are focused on vacations, NOT politics. Just ask President Dukakis who led Bush 41 by about 20 points in July 1988. As a result, the DUmmies are...

Edward Felten, a Princeton University computer science professor, along with two of his graduate students on Wednesday stirred up controversy surrounding the usage of electronic voting (e-voting) machines in U.S. elections by releasing a paper that claims they were able to hack the machines and upload malicious programs that could potentially modify vote tabulation, as well as shut down the machines, the Associated Press reports via Forbes.com. Felten posted the paper on the Princeton website, and it describes how he and his students obtained and tested a Diebold AccuVote TS e-voting machine and found a handful of vulnerabilities, including a...

Some professors at Princeton University have posted a video on YouTube showing how to hack into the Diebold voting machines that are supposed to be used in 40% of the elections this fall. On Democratic Underground they're talking about how to steal cards just like the voting machines use from Diebold laundry machines used in laundromats, and then reprogram them to change the votes on the voting machines.

This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates.

Pa. Sued Over Electronic Voting Machines Voter advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to stop Pennsylvania counties from using "paperless" electronic voting machines, saying that such systems leave no paper record that could be used in the event of a recount, audit or other problem. The suit asks the state's Commonwealth Court to decertify machines used in 58 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. The other counties use optical scanning systems, in which voters fill in bubbles on paper forms that are counted in scanning machines; the plaintiffs say such systems should be in use statewide. "Whatever the initial promise may have...