Devastating voting machine hack; Leon County dumps Diebold

BREAKING : Due to contractual non-performance and security design issues, Leon County (Florida) supervisor of elections Ion Sancho told Black Box Voting that he will never again use Diebold in an election. He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from the county. He will issue a formal announcement to this effect shortly. This comes on the heels of the resignation of Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell, and the announcement that a stockholder's class action suit has been filed against Diebold by Scott & Scott.

Black Box Voting: http://www.blackboxvoting.org 

Leon County Election Supervisor Ion Sancho: 

http://www.leonfl.org/elect/MeetTheSupervisor.htm 

Finnish security expert Harri Hursti proved that Diebold lied to Secretaries of State across the nation when Diebold claimed votes could not be changed on the memory card. 

A test election was run in Leon County Tusday Dec. 13 with a total of eight ballots - six ballots voted "no" on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thompson and by Harri Hursti voted "yes" indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked. 

At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A "zero report" was run indicating zero votes on the memory card. In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes. 

The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied "ender card" was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine. 

Correct results should have been: 

Yes:2 

No:6  

However, just as Hursti had planned, the results tape read: 

Yes:7 

No:1 

The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into the GEMS central tabulator. The central tabulator is the "mother ship" that pulls in all votes from voting machines. The results in the central tabulator read: 

Yes:7 

No:1 

This exploit, accomplished without being given any password and with the same level of access given thousands of poll workers across the USA, showed that the votes themselves were changed in a one-step process. This hack would not be detected in any normal canvassing procedure, and it required only a single a credit-card sized memory card. 

On Oct. 17, 2005 Diebold Elections Systems Research and Development chief Pat Green specifically told the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) board of elections that votes cannot be changed using only a memory card. Video of Pat Green, Cuyahoga County 

According to Public Records responses obtained by Black Box Voting in response to our requests shows that Diebold promulgated this misrepresentation to as many as 800 state and local elections officials. 

In other news, a stockholder suit was filed today against Diebold by the law offices of Scott and Scott: 

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-13-2005/0004233556&EDATE=

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