Diebold Election Systems

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Diebold Elections Systems is a subsidiary of Diebold that makes and sells Voting machines.

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Alleged fraud

Their Diebold GEMS central tabulator software, version 1.18.15 of which counted most votes in the United StatesTemplate:Fact in the U.S. presidential election, 2004, is at the center of controversy for apparent irregularities versus the U.S. presidential election, 2004, exit polls. The Diebold AccuVote voting machine has also come under scrutiny especially by Ralph Nader's campaign.

The GEMS software, certified by NASED via Ciber Labs employee Shawn Southworth of Huntsville, Alabama is at the center of an alleged Diebold Election Systems electoral fraud, 2004 that is much more serious than the previous allegations in the U.S. presidential election, 2000 and U.S. midterm election, 2002 in which Diebold also came under scrutiny.

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History

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Diebold Elections Systems is currently run by Bob UrosevichTemplate:Fact who has worked in the election systems industry since 1976. In 1979, Mr. Urosevich founded American Information Systems. He served as the President of AIS from 1979 through 1992, and that company, now known as Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S), counted over 100 million ballots in the U.S. 2000 General Election. Bob's brother, Todd Urosevich, is Vice President, Aftermarket Sales with ES&S, DES's chief comptetitor. In 1995, Bob Urosevich started I-Mark Systems, whose product was a touch screen voting system utilizing a smart card and biometric encryption authorization technology. Global Election Systems, Inc. acquired I-Mark in 1997, and on July 31, 2000 Mr. Urosevich was promoted from Vice President of Sales and Marketing and New Business Development to President and Chief Operating Officer. On January 22, 2002, Diebold announced the acquisition of GES, then a manufacturer and supplier of electronic voting terminals and solutions. The total purchase price, in stock and cash, was $24.7 million. Global Election Systems subsequently changed its name to Diebold Election Systems, Inc.

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Criticism

Together, ES&S and Diebold Election Systems are (as of 2004) responsible for tallying approximately 80% of the votes cast in the United States. The software architecture common to both is a creation of Mr. Urosevich's company I-Mark. Some experts claim that this structure is easily compromised, in part due to its reliance on Microsoft Access databases. Britain J. Williams, responsible for certification of voting machines for the state of Georgia and a consultant to Diebold, has provided an assessment based on his accounting of potential exploits.

In August 2003, Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold, announced that he had been a top fund-raiser for President George W. Bush and had sent a get-out-the-funds letter to Ohio Republicans. In the letters he says he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Critics of Diebold interpreted this as implying that he might rig the company's electronic voting machines to give an unfair advantage to Bush. The letter also was seen as an indication of a perceived conflict of interest by critics. He has responded to the critics by pointing out that the company's election machines division is run out of Texas by a registered Democrat. He also claims the statement about delivering Ohio's electoral votes to Bush was simply a poor choice of words. Nonetheless, he vowed to lower his political profile lest his personal actions harm the company. O'Dell resigned his post of chairman and chief executive of Diebold on Monday December 12, 2005 following reports that the company was facing securities fraud litigation surrounding charges of insider trading.

DES claims its systems provide strong immunity to ballot tampering and other vote rigging attempts. These claims have been challenged, notably by Bev Harris on her website, Blackboxvoting.org, and book by the same name. Harris and C. D. Sludge, an Internet journalist, both claim there is also evidence that the Diebold systems have been exploited to tamper with American elections — a claim Harris expands in her book Black Box Voting. Sludge further cites Votewatch for evidence that suggests a pattern of compromised voting machine exploits throughout the 1990s, and specifically involving the Diebold machines in the 2002 election. DES also has come under fire for the recent discovery that the Diebold voting machines do not and did not in 2004 meet the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) error standard.

The controversy regarding electronic voting machines is related to a larger debate concerning the relative merits of open source and proprietary security products. Advocates of the open source model say that systems are more secure when anyone can view the underlying software code, identify bugs and make peer-reviewed changes. Advocates of proprietary systems claim that so-called black box systems are more secure because potential weaknesses are hidden.

Aviel Rubin, Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University and Technical Director of the Information Security Institute has analyzed the source code used in these voting machines and reports "this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts." [1] Following the publication of this paper, the State of Maryland hired Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to perform another analysis of the Diebold voting machines. SAIC concluded “[t]he system, as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at high risk of compromise.” [2]

In March 2006, the Maryland House voted to ban Diebold machines from state primary and general elections. The Senate still has to pass the bill in order for it to become law, but the proposal highlights concerns that the Diebold machines do not leave a paper trail. The text of the law states that Diebold must equip its touch-screen voting machines to produce paper receipts by the 2008 elections in order to keep its contract with the state. Similar concerns have been voiced in other states, including Florida and California.

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Current controversy

Diebold Election Systems, Inc.'s voting machines have caused a public uproar among some opponents.

In September 2003, a large number of internal Diebold memos, dating back to mid-2001, were posted to the Web by the website organizations Why War? and the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons, a group of student activists at Swarthmore College. Congressman Kucinich (D-OH) has placed portions of the files on his websites. Diebold's critics believe that these memos reflect badly on Diebold's voting machines and business practices. For example: "Do not to offer damaging opinions of our systems, even when their failings become obvious." (Election Support Guide; pg. 10 -- [3])

In December 2003, an internal Diebold memo was leaked to the press, sparking controversy in Maryland. Maryland officials requested that Diebold add the functionality of printing voting receipts. The leaked memo said, "As a business, I hope we're smart enough to charge them up the wazoo [for this feature]".

Diebold attempted to stop the release and publication of a number of internal memos by sending cease and desist letters to sites hosting these documents demanding that they be removed in violation of the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act provisions of the DMCA found in § 512 of the United States Copyright Act. When it turned out that some of the challenged groups would not back down, Diebold retracted their threat. Consequently, Diebold itself was sued by the EFF and the Stanford Cyberlaw Clinic on behalf of the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons, who claimed damages and cost.

In October 2004, Judge Jeremy Fogel of the District Court of Northern California ruled that Diebold's use of the DMCA was unfair. The relevant section of the DMCA states that it is illegal to knowingly apply the law to suppress free speech. The decision against Diebold is the first to use the copyright provisions of Section 512(f) of the DMCA, setting a precedent for future cases of this kind. This ruling was surpising to some scholars. Diebold actually had valid copyrights to some of the memos. If the usage of those memos was allowed, it would have to be under fair use.

In 2004, after an initial investigation into the company's practices by the California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley caused him to issue a ban on one model of Diebold voting machines California, the Attorney General of California, Bill Lockyer, sued Diebold, charging that it had given false information about the security and reliability of Diebold Election Systems machines that were sold to the state. To settle the case, Diebold agreed to pay $2.6 million and to implement certain reforms. [4]

In June 2005, the Tallahassee Democrat reported that when given access to Diebold vote-counting computers, Bev Harris- a critic of Diebold's voting machines - was able to make 65,000 votes disappear simply by changing the memory card that stores voting results for one that had been altered. Although the machines are supposed to record changes to data stored in the system, they showed no record of tampering after the memory cards were swapped. In response, a spokesperson for the Department of State said that, "Information on a blog site is not viable or credible." [5]

In December 2005, Diebold's CEO Wally O'Dell left the company following reports that the company was facing securities fraud litigation surrounding charges of insider trading. [6]

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See also

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External links

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