Politech: How Diebold may hack the vote, by Paul Krugman

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/02KRUG.html

Hack the Vote
By PAUL KRUGMAN
December 2, 2003

Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed 
to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No 
surprise there. But Walden O'Dell — who says that he wasn't talking about 
his business operations — happens to be the chief executive of Diebold 
Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use 
across the United States.
For example, Georgia — where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories 
in the 2002 midterm elections — relies exclusively on Diebold machines. To 
be clear, though there were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no 
evidence that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence that 
the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold machines leave no paper trail.
Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, who has introduced a bill requiring 
that digital voting machines leave a paper trail and that their software be 
available for public inspection, is occasionally told that systems lacking 
these safeguards haven't caused problems. "How do you know?" he asks.
What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are 
technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very 
least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover 
up product defects.
[...]
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