Not Looking Good For Diebold

Not too long ago, Harri Hursti, "a computer security expert from Finland", was hired by California's Secretary of State to try to bust one of Diebold's voting machines out there. He has yet to perform his test in California. There was, however, a test conducted in Leon County, Florida. According to Black Box Voting, it doesn't sound like it went all that well for Diebold, via LeftCoaster (12.14.05):

"Due to contractual non-performance and security design issues, Leon County (Florida) supervisor of elections Ion Sancho has announced that he will never again use Diebold in an election.

He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from the county."

Leon County dumps Diebold

Here's what they did. "A test election was run in Leon County on Tuesday with a total of eight ballots. Six ballots voted 'no' on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thompson and by Harri Hursti voted 'yes' indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked."

So the correct result would have been 2 for Yes and 6 for No.

Harri plugged in his hacked card, reset the machine, and ran its diagnostics. As expected, the machine showed zero votes. They then ran the eight test ballots through, then checked the results.

Yes got 7, No got 1.

"The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into the GEMS central tabulator, a step cited by Diebold as a protection against memory card hacking. The central tabulator is the 'mother ship' that pulls in all votes from voting machines. However, the GEMS central tabulator failed to notice that the voting machines had been hacked."

The results? Yes got 7, No got 1.

Uh oh.

Harri's been beating on these things for a while now. Sounds like he and his buddy Herb have been having fun. OnLine Journal (06.03.05):

"Computer expert Harri Hursti gained control over Leon County memory cards, which handle the vote-reporting from the precincts. Dr. Herbert Thompson, a security expert, took control of the Leon County central tabulator by implanting a trojan horse-like script.

Two programmers can become a lone programmer, says Hursti, who has figured out a way to control the entire central tabulator by way of a single memory card swap, and also how to make tampered polling place tapes match tampered central tabulator results."

Optical scan machines hacked in Florida

Oh and Wally O'Dell, the feller who once wrote "'I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president'"? He used to be CEO of Diebold. Decided to resign recently. Might have something to do with insider trading.