News To Be Spread Far And Wide

Here's something that, sixty some odd days before the most important Presidential election in recent history, we'll unfortunately see little coverage of in the major media. Unless the story is picked up and spread by the blogosphere and individual folks. If your state is using Diebold machines this election season, write a letter (or forward the story below) to your local paper. Tell a friend. Call your mother. Inform the folks at the office. Contact CNN, MSNBC, and FOX. Make sure this information gets out. From geek-central Slashdot:

Black Box Voting has exposed a security hole in Diebold machines that tabulate votes collected from electronic voting machines. A code entered into the tabulator's user interface duplicates the "secure" counts into an insecure count which can be changed, and counted instead. The "double books" vulnerability and exploit were reported to the manufacturer over a year ago, and confirmed, while major customers (California and Washington states) were notified shortly thereafter. In spite of some revisions, the latest version of the software remains insecure. Diebold voting machines running GEMS version 1.18.x are vulnerable, running in about three dozen states. Although the software is widely deployed, and scheduled for use in shortly upcoming elections, risk mitigations are available, mostly protocols restricting physical or network access to the machines. Other auditing/accountability measures for ensuring only trusted access to the system are recommended.

This is proof positive, in my mind, of a proactive and conscious attempt to use these machines to affect, alter, rather than simply record, the ballot counts in three dozen states. If the election is to be as close as 2000's was, this type of tampering in one or two battleground states could determine the outcome of the presidential election. A baker's dozen, now, that could even provide the beneficiary candidate with a mandate.