Diebold Admits ALL Versions of Their Software Delete Ballots Without Notice

[deminks]

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6995

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.

(end snip)

A 'permanent republican majority' indeed.

[Captain Hilts]

1. This is NOT acceptable.

ER: Oh, dear. Well, fuck that shit. Use one of these...

[annabanana]

2. That there is still proprietary hardware & software in the middle

of the most important civic operation in the country is inexcusable.

[blm]

10. We KNOW 2002 and 2004 stolen, but, I'd say it's a safe bet that Diebold stole votes from Gore

in 2000 and they managed to get away with it because none of the recount focus was EVER on the corruption of the machines and their software.

[defendandprotect]

29. These machines began coming in during late 1960's ....

and the large computers used by media to report election results came in during

mid-1960's with odd crashes and changes in results.

Media heads are complicit in these steals -- and I'd begin by questioning Nixon vs

Humphrey "win."

IMO, as soon as the Voting Rights Act was passed, organized and large theft of votes

began over longer distances.

[tblue37]

40. I believe that 2008 also had serious electronic vote theft problems.

Who knows how many votes Obama really got--or how many the Dem candidates on downticket races really got.

[BeFree]

43. Me too

I wonder how many legislatures and school boards have losers in office?

Not that it's news to many of us, and that the rest of the world can now quit calling us crazy, but we knew this day was coming.

[blm]

51. Me, too. But, I also believe the vigilance of Dean's DNC and Dem activists like us curtailed the

widespread action that we saw in 2002 that grew into a monster by 2004.

[wroberts189]

20. They always hide behind that word "proprietary" ..inexcusable indeed. nt

[bjobotts]

49. It's ok now...Rove & Cheney had Mike McConnell killed.The MIT Geek who flipped the election for Bus

[Hekate]

3. KnR. Corporate fascists. Kleptocrats. Bushites.

:kick:

[BuyingThyme]

4. #5

[MiniMe]

5. Thank God Minnesota didn't use Diebold

Normie may have actually had a legitimate reason to ask for the vote to be overturned in that case.

[kickysnana]

9. We use diebold but the scanners with paper ballots. n/t

[Stevenmarc]

11. Those were able to be hacked too

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/5921.html

[hobbit709]

6. Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!

And of course this flaw is "accidental"

[malaise]

7. Ding ding

We have a winner.

[AndyA]

8. This is absolutely, totally UNACCEPTABLE.

This is criminal. Many have known for a long time this Republican-friendly company has been screwing with election results. And now even they have verified it.

How many Republicans have now served that weren't duly elected by their constituents?

[Jackpine Radical]

12. New Diebold Counting Technology for Paper Ballots

(To be used only with Democratic ballots)

[Catshrink]

13. This makes me think of Andy

R.I.P., dear Andy.

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. This should be grounds for a lawsuit.

[sonias]

15. big time

At the very least there piece of crap should be decertified and the company fined heavily.

I'm in favor of charging them with election fraud too.


Sonia

[Echo In Light]

17. But!...But!...But!...election theft of 00 and 04 is a CONSPIRACY THEORY!!!

[defendandprotect]

30. Will r-w "Supremes" find computer voting machines "Unconstitutional"--???

[bleever]

16. Who could have known?

[QueenOfCalifornia]

18. ACCIDENTAL?

NOT

[wroberts189]

19. Sigh....when will the states learn? Do the machines have to eat babies first? knr nt

[4lbs]

21. No, but maybe if the Diebold execs got bonuses that caused populist outrage.

n/t

[Wednesdays]

23. Only if the machines had a "D" after their names

:banghead:

[defendandprotect]

28. Administrations change, but the (R)/Dielbold machines go on and on ....

[Wapsie B]

35. No they have to suck fetuses out of the mother's womb first.

[NBachers]

46. You mean like the "depleted uranium" we blanketed Iraq with?

[jmowreader]

22. They're not "flaws," as anyone here can attest

These machines are made to delete ballots. They work as designed.

That they're made to delete ballots should disqualify them from ever being used.

[Last Stand]

24. Didn't they try to decertify Diebold in CA before? I thought that they failed to do so depite

evidence that it was a fair response to a broken system.

[BradBlog]

26. CA did decertify Diebold previously...

The state decertified Deibold's touch-screen systems in 2004, but the former Schwarzenegger-appointed Republican SoS Bruce McPherson re-certified them for use again, despite dozens of known flaws in the system.

When elected Dem SoS Debra Bowen came to power she commissioned a study, finding the flaws all over again (though not the audit log/ballot deletion bug being discused here), decertified the systems (both paper ballot and touch-screen systems), disallowed touch-screens for use by all but one-per-polling place as needed to meet HAVA's disabilities-voting mandate, and then recertified the paper ballots systems for use based on specific use criteria (which has, in many counties, been largely ignored).

Got it?

[backscatter712]

25. Time to mandate end-to-end (E2E) verifiable elections.

Probably the simplest way of doing that is by having the elections done on paper, with strong physical security including guards for the ballot boxes, tamper-evident seals, logbooks & audit trails, chains-of-custody, independent and party observers watching every vote counted, etc.

Another way of accomplishing the same thing is to use technology to do the opposite of what Diebold (now Premier) does - improve transparency. Punchscan ( http://punchscan.org ) is an example of this - open-source software, cryptographic authentication, giving the voter just enough information to take him with him or her to verify that his or her ballot was counted correctly without violating the secret ballot. Verification becomes a matter of completing a mathematical proof.

In any case, I'm tired of opaque black boxes with blinking lights and shiny touchscreens being used to obfuscate election tabulation and enable cheating. Diebold's got to go!

[Fireweed247]

27. Someone send this to Bush

He will want to include it in his book.

[valerief]

31. Why isn't the administration and congress talking about outlawing electronic voting? nt

[edc]

32. All electronic voting machines

:evilgrin: are designed with voter fraud in mind. But this is not news. Its been known for years. Don't hold your breath waiting for a political fix.

[JerseygirlCT]

33. ...and we're all a bunch of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists, right?

I wish I could say this surprises me.

[Wapsie B]

34. Time to assign some high school talented and gifted class to the project.

On second thought, maybe only half of them would be needed. It simply tabulates votes. How hard could it be to design a computerized system? From the looks of these clowns at Diebold it's nearly impossible.

[Pavulon]

36. This is the recycled "clear" button story

every computer system cycles logs. The article is written by an advocate.

[reggie the dog]

37. well noooo shit

[AlbertCat]

38. Tell us something we don't know!

At this point, I'd rather put an X or an O on a scrap of paper and put it in a slit cut in the lid of a cardboard box.


More reliable.

[JMDEM]

39. SO WHAT. What are you? A conspiracy nut?

Off to the dungeon with you, and this post.

How dare you discuss election fraud.

[tblue37]

41. A feature, not a bug. nt

[MadMaddie]

42. Yea that's called intentionally developing the code to delete

ballots. That to me sounds criminal.

[groundloop]

44. Gee, it's a good thing

that a company like Diebold doesn't make ATM machines and the software that runs them. Our checking accounts would be in shambles with all the screwed up transactions. :sarcasm: Ohhhh, never mind.

[peace13]

45. May 'lead to decertification of the company's voting systems'

Gee, do ya think? What a joke.

[Jambalaya]

47. WalMart and Diebold

Can anybody explain why various WalMart locations were used as mailing addresses for Diebold?

[alfredo]

48. It's a Fucking adding machine, how can you fuck it up so bad?

[gtar100]

50. They can make ATM's virtually flawless but get stumped on a voting machine

Willful negligence at best; election fraud at worst. I have no reason to doubt the worst of them. Fucking human trash. Make a joke of technology and our democracy. That groups of people can design, plan, organize, and build these kind of machines over periods of years is really an indictment on just how low people can go, just how dead to the world so many people are in the United States. Thank god they aren't a majority but they sure stink up the place.