Voting Machine Update
It looks like voting machine vendor Diebold is going to have to explain itself to a judge the week after Thanksgiving. (Prior coverage on this issue here.)
The Summary: Diebold is one of the companies hoping to get a contract from the state to provide computerized voting machines to county boards of elections. But Diebold has asked the court to exempt it from a provision in the state's newly crafted law that sets out requirements for vendors.
Click here for the news release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is doing the legal filing on behalf of a North Carolina voting machine activist. Technically, they are intervening in an ongoing case.
A hearing in the case is expected the Monday after Thanksgiving.
Comments (3)
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Why are they asking for the exemption?
Posted on November 21, 2005 3:29 PM
What, you didn't want to plow through multiple links and my obtuse prose to figure that out?!?
Basically, Diebold builds its machines using Microsoft Windows operating software. They feel that the state law requires them to submit the Windows source code, something they're afraid Microsoft would frown on.
The reaction from folks at EFF and the like is basically: well, you choose to build your system that way. Other operators based their system on open-source software or software of their own design and can comply. If Diebold can't submit everything that drives their hardware, they say that's just tough luck.
The Diebold folks (and some folks who work for the BOE) think that they should just be able to submit the program that actually takes and counts votes, and not the OS.
That's the argument that's before the court.
Posted on November 21, 2005 3:35 PM
Non techies don't understand - the operating system DOES affect how votes are counted.
Furthermore, Diebold modifies the Windows operating system,
Jeffrey Dean, a convicted felon is known to have modified the Windows CE operating system used by Diebold.
Jeffrey Dean used his talents with computers to rob a business.
Jeffrey Dean was released from prison in August, 1995 and Elder was released in November 1996...
Jeffrey Dean, when released from prison, had $87 in his inmate account. He was ordered to pay $385,227 in restitution for his embezzlements. For most of us, this would be a crushing financial blow, and we would find it difficult to bankroll a business, yet somehow Dean (and his wife, Deborah M. Dean) managed to become the owners of Spectrum Printing & Mailing. In 2000, Dean’s printing and mailing firm was purchased for $1.6 million by Global Election Systems.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm
Articles that explains how Diebold alters the Microsoft operating system in voting machines and in ATMs:
Part of the Voting and Elections web pages
by Douglas W. Jones
THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Department of Computer Science
Furthermore, it is emerging that the version of Windows CE used by Diebold is both heavily customized and full of dynamically loaded libraries. As a result, there are strong grounds for the conclusion that the operating system is not unmodified commercial off the shelf software (COTS), and that with this extensive use of dynamic linkage, we cannot even tell if the system being run on a particular voting machine resembles the system that was disclosed in the configuration documents submitted with this system when it went through the FEC/NASED approval process.
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldftp.html
Diebold and other ATM vendors say they're "hardening" the installations of Windows they ship with their ATMs by disabling unnecessary services and ports and removing files that support peripherals
http://www.computerworld.com/networkingtopics/networking/story/0,10801,89119,00.html
Diebold patched the Windows CE operating system in Georgia:
"Williams does acknowledge, however, that a month and a half before the
November election, he worked with Diebold to apply a patch to the Windows CE
operating system. The voting machines run on version 3.0 of Windows CE, he
said, and they patched it to correct problems they were having with the
system"
http://www.votescam.com/Patchelections.php
Posted on November 24, 2005 12:15 AM