By Brad Friedman on 6/29/2005, 4:49pm PT  

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (for whom we readily admit having a crush since having met her at the National Election Reform Conference in Nashville - see swooning photo of both of us at right) discussed the latest chililng Diebold hack conducted several weeks ago by BlackBoxVoting.org in a BuzzFlash article by Matthew Cardinale published today.

The hack they performed was very important, and raised some serious hackles from the friendly folks of Diebold Inc. They of the promise to "deliver Ohio" for George W. Bush, and coincidentally, the world's largest Voting Machine Company.

If you're not familiar with the Diebold hack done by BBV (and you may be, since we've be woefully remiss in reporting on it here) or the angry response that Diebold sent to the election supervisor who allowed the experiement, you'll want to read the whole article...

"The bottom line is we can't trust the machines, and we can't trust the results being told to the American people," U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) said in a phone interview for the progressive news community, adding "we are planning some as-yet-undefined events in [our] district" around the issue.

The problem, the Congresswoman said, is that the machines "haven't been provided with appropriate software and safeguards. If they had the appropriate software and safeguards, then the machines wouldn't be a problem. So either [provide] that, or go back to paper ballots," she advised.

Rep. McKinney, along with Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL), had been on hand for a hack demonstration in the Leon County Elections Office, in Florida, in May 2005. The demo was one of three meetings that had been organized by Bev Harris and the team at Black Box Voting. Diebold has since issued a vitriolic letter to Mr. Ion Sancho, Leon County Elections Supervisor, for allowing Black Box Voting to conduct the hack demo on site.
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As Black Box Voting announced in recent weeks, two computer science experts have been able to hack into Leon County's Diebold central tabulator as well as individual optical scan machines.
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"Granted the same access as an employee of our office, it was possible to enter the computer, alter election results, and exit the system without leaving any physical record of this action," said a formal statement posted by Mr. Ion Sancho on the Leon County Election's Office official website.

The statement is available here.

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