#1: San Jose Mercury News:
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley said Tuesday that Diebold Elections Systems could lose the right to sell electronic voting machines in California after state auditors found the company distributed software that had not been approved by election officials.Can it get worse? It already has.
The auditors reported that voters in 17 California counties cast ballots in recent elections using software that had not been certified by the state. And voters in Los Angeles County and two smaller counties voted on machines installed with software that was not approved by the Federal Election Commission.
In an appearance before a state voting panel, Shelley said the report represented a ``deeply troubling'' violation of state election law.
The audit is likely to feed growing concerns about the security of electronic voting as states rush to update voting equipment before the 2004 presidential election.
#2: Wired News:
At least five convicted felons secured management positions at a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, according to critics demanding more stringent background checks for people responsible for voting machine software.Okay so it can get worse. And it does - again. And this one's the head-spinner.
Voter advocate Bev Harris alleged Tuesday that managers of a subsidiary of Diebold, one of the country's largest voting equipment vendors, included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records.
#3: The U.K. Register:
The archive of internal correspondence from the politically-connected ATM giant Diebold - which is bidding for many electronic voting contracts across the US - is a gift that keeps on giving. Diebold has its own answer to critics who want a verifiable paper trail. Incredibly, the e-voting terminals don't leave behind such information.Spread the word. This is one of the ways the Crackhead Adminstration plans to stack the deck next November. Be outraged. You're entitled.
It plans to make the modifications so expensive that city and state officials balk at the cost.
Steven Dennis at the Maryland Gazette last week unearthed correspondence from a Diebold engineer who advised that "any after-sale changes should be prohibitively expensive."
