checking in on diebold, and nothing has changed

You know, just because Obama won the election, doesn't mean the US voting system has been fixed. It just means no one will pay attention to the corrupt, broken system until 2012, when they have another opportunity to do nothing about it.

More quickies, these from the Is The US A Democracy file.

  • In California:
    Diebold Admits Audit Logs in ALL Versions of Their Software Fail to Record Ballot Deletions

    Startling admission made during public hearing in CA to consider decertification of the company's voting and tabulation software...

    Even the audit log system on current versions of Premier Election Solutions' (formerly Diebold's) electronic voting and tabulating systems --- used in some 34 states across the nation --- fail to record the wholesale deletion of ballots. Even when ballots are deleted on the same day as an election. That's the shocking admission heard today from Justin Bales, Premier's Western Region manager, at a State of California public hearing on the possible decertification of Diebold/Premier's tabulator system, GEMS v. 1.18.19.

    An election system's audit logs are meant to record all activity during the system's actual counting of ballots, so that later examiners may determine, with certainty, whether any fraudulent or mistaken activity had occurred during the count. Diebold's software fails to do that, as has recently been discovered by Election Integrity advocates in Humboldt County, CA, and then confirmed by the CA Secretary of State. The flaws, built into the system for more than a decade, are in serious violation of federal voting system certification standards.

    The problems may lead to decertification of the company's voting systems, as well as an examination of voting systems made by other companies to determine if they too may have been able to sneak such violations past both federal and state testers...

    Today's hearing was a response to the startling discovery last December, by a volunteer group in Humboldt County that, under fairly common circumstances, the older version of GEMS used by the county, and several others in the state, dropped all votes from the ballots in the first deck of ballots run through GEMS. (See BRAD BLOG coverage: here, here and here.)

    The Humboldt County Election Transparency Project, using the free and open source software program Ballot Browser, found that Diebold's GEMS system had eliminated all votes from 197 vote-by-mail ballots cast in a single precinct in Eureka, CA during last November's general election. . . .

    Following the discovery of Diebold's dropped votes, and the equally disturbing revelation that Diebold had been aware of the problem for years. . .

  • And in Kentucky:
    KY Election Officials Arrested, Charged With 'Changing Votes at E-Voting Machines'

    Circuit court judge, county clerk and election officials among eight indicted for gaming elections in 2002, 2004, 2006 County uses popular, unverifiable ES&S touch-screen voting systems. . .

    Over the years, we've detailed the arrests and other unsavory behavior of many of the not-so-good election officials who, we were told, should simply have been trusted (our "favorite" has always been the case of Monterey CA's Tony Anchundo, who told us on air we should "trust" him, just a month or two before being arrested on 43 counts).

    Well, now we've got a whole passel of still more crooked officials to add to the list. Moreover: The Kentucky officials arrested and indicted today, "including the circuit court judge, the county clerk, and election officers" of Clay County, have been charged with "changing votes at the voting machine" and showing others how to do it!... [Excellent story here on The Brad Blog.]

    Also good discussion about this here on BoingBoing.

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