TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Having commissioned and ignored a lite audit PDF] from a defense contractor, Maryland will be ordering thousands more Diebold touchscreens for the March Presidential primary. Meanwhile, in California, evidence of Diebold tampering emerges as the Secretrary of State orders audits of his own.

Washington Times, Nov. 7:

The court-ordered probe into the breakdown of 10 new touch-screen voting machines in Fairfax County on Election Day. . .

[A lawsuit] was filed yesterday by the Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland, which wants state election officials to reconsider a $55 million contract with [AVS].

Maryland election officials . . . said they will go forward with plans to install 11,000 new touch-screen electronic voting machines in time for the March presidential primary.

Fairfax County earlier this year bought 1,000 new laptop touch-screen computer voting machines from Texas-based Advanced Voting Solutions (AVS). . . vote returns came in slower, machines broke down in nine precincts and Republicans filed a lawsuit that challenges the results.

[S]tate and local governments are spending tens of millions of dollars to overhaul their systems for recording votes. Under the federal Help America Vote Act, [b]localities must upgrade manual voting machines by 2006[/b].

Wired News Nov. 11:

Citing concerns that Diebold Election Systems installed uncertified software on some electronic voting systems in a California county without the state's knowledge, officials are forcing the company to pay for an audit of all the company's voting machines used in the state in order to win certification for a new model. . . .

The software was installed in Alameda County . . .

[State] certification is contingent on Diebold paying for an independent audit of all its hardware and software used in 13 other California counties to determine if uncertified components have been installed elsewhere.

Diebold must also cooperate fully with the independent auditors and with the secretary of state's office during its investigation of the certification violation . . . Three have already signed contracts with Diebold for TSx machines. . . A fourth county, San Diego, is negotiating with Diebold to purchase over 10,000 TSx units.

Starting in 2004, the state will also conduct random audits of voting systems to ensure that all software and hardware is certified. And in the future, the state will require CEOs of vendors to affirm under penalty of perjury that the company will not change systems without obtaining written approval from the secretary of state. Failure to do so may result in de-certification and possible criminal charges

This California SecState Kevin Shelly is talking a good game. Is he for real? The answer will be in who is selected for the "independent" audit.

| Posted at 01:46 | PERMA-LINK |

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