By stating that the risk of exploiting an admitted security hole is "low"...is admitting that there is a security hole!!! Does anyone get that??? Am I going insane, or is everyone stupid!!!

It also implies, "There is a security hole, and it can be exploited." DUH F***ING DUH!!!

Where's the election officials that are supposed to be doing something, now that they have admitted themselves, that there is a security hole???

... more like a chasm than a hole ...

Keep on slugging, Brad! You da man! What, do they think we're ALL stupid???

Dan, DREDD:

You're of course correct. But I'm at a loss for what Pennsylvania's short term option was. From the general reading I'm doing, it seems Diebold will have to close this chasm or be decertified for November.

Pennsylvania didn't REALLY REALLY have the option of going to paper ballots hand counted because the United States Department of Justice had already announced they were going to sue Pennsylvania if they did that after the Westmoreland County case was decided by the Commonwealth Court.

That court said, "go use paper ballots for federal offices and keep your old machines for state offices." USDOJ intervened and threatened a federal lawsuit if PA did that.

Paper ballots hand counted has a lot of appeal, but not to a lot of really mean lawyers who like to sue people.

Brad and all - clicked on the Leon Co. Fl. link provided by John Gideon yesterday in his Daily Voting News and was a little concerned (and surprised) by what was reported as Sancho's feeling towards Diebold now. Towards the very end of the article, its reported "Sancho said he feels better about Diebold machines now because the California team thoroughly evaluated them." Don't know what exactly to make of that statement. Has he succumbed to the pressure of deadlines? Evidently he's confident that he can now conduct a fair election in Leon Co. with the knowledge he's gained from his and California's testing. Wonder what he thinks about the chances of a fair election with diebold equipment in other Fl. Co's. and in other states?

When there were paper ballots, there could be no loophole. A broken pencil? Mass changes of votes by one person with access? Couldn't happen. Whatever powers that be, rammed these machines down our throats, these "loopholes" were no accident! Why would we switch from a much cheaper, less hackable system...to a more expensive, more easily hackable system...and hackable by less people??? It was no accident.

By "hackable by less people", I mean less people can change more votes, and detected less.

Pennsylvania has many esteemed universities and lots of state colleges. Yet, it appears that the state has no one who can formulate a coherent thought. Do all of the grads move to other states? (We know they aren't moving to Ohio --- doesn't seem to be much of an intellect among the population there either.)

So where are they? Does it become unbearable for "thinking" people to live amidst such sheer stupidity?

I don't have a degree; yet, I can't take the simple-mindedness that pervades the masses in today's PA --- I moved away. (And I find the same simple mindedness in the citizens of Arizona--there is no escape afterall.)

Not so long ago, it wasn't that way. Those were the days --- before Rush, before Newt, before Rove. The anti-war movement produced a generation of "enlightened" people. They used their heritage of "Fighting Against the Man" to participate in stopping that other illegal war.

Maybe when the masses of PA don't have enough work to pay for the gas that goes into their SUV's and hummers and giant pickups-- maybe then they will rise up once again --and insist that their vote be counted!!

Thanks Brad for illustrating so well the willing collaboration between election officials who are supposed to guard the the citizenry from defective or fraud prone voting systems, and the manufacturers whose primary goal is to generate income with the least amount of cost.

Local election officials put their trust into the state to only approve voting systems that comply with the law, are a wise expenditure of taxpayer funds, will provide the voters of the state with election results they can trust are accurate, and act as a check upon the claims of the vendors. What we have seen instead are state officials parroting vendors instead of challenging the vendor's claims. That is a betrayal of local officials and their trust in the state, and the citizens of that state.

Re Comment #5: The report of what Ion's attitude is regarding Diebold is not a quote, nor states when he supposedly expressed that sentiment. If he made it shortly after the California examination was issued it would reflect the knowledge available at that time. As a reporter's paraphrase, it should be checked with Ion himself.

I have my doubts regarding that paraphrase. Ion Sancho has a legal background. He also is familiar with the California
report. He knows that the California team did not thoroughly evaluate the Diebold voting systems. They were provided by Diebold with particular source codes related to the memory card and firmware for four weeks. They were not given any working machines, nor memory cards that had been loaded with ballot definitions and election criteria by the central election management program (GEMS). Without any working machines in front of them they could not know what all the various methods there might be to access the memory cards other than by physical possession. As was discovered in Utah's much more in-depth evaluation, there are multiple methods by which an election can be compromised.

The California team was limited in their access to the entire voting system, and in their mandate from the California Secretary of State. While the team assembled by Black Box Voting examined the actual TSx touch screen voting system in Utah. With just one day to examine the voting system they found the most serious risks ever discovered in electronic voting systems. Imagine what could be found if a team was allowed to forensically de-construct all of Diebold Election Systems' products. Better, that the same team be able to thoroughly examine all electronic based voting systems.

I will point out that the one opportunity given for an independent evaluation by Compuware of other voting systems found serious deficiencies.

The contrast of the statement that the vulnerabilities are "low risk" with the reaction of Michael Shamos is stark.
"There are two types of security holes," he said. "The ones that are designed in and which you didn't think about the security implications beforehand or a bug--a mistake--in the program code. This is the first kind: It is not a bug; it's a horribly designed feature." Michael Shamos, professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and adviser to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on electronic voting."

All election officials need to start representing the interests of the voters, not the vendors.

Election officials perform like the Iraqi press:

"To be fair, the local media would not be thriving as they are today without the help of the military, which has gone out of its way to provide Iraqi journalists with access, training in the basics of reporting, equipment, and funding to operate newspapers and TV and radio stations. 'But there’s always a catch,' the Marine public affairs officer told me. 'You don’t get something for free.' Referring to an IO-funded newspaper that operated briefly in Fallujah, the officer said, 'The compromise here was we’ll fund your newspaper, mister Iraqi editor, but you may have to run coalition information'” (link here, emphasis added).

Yep, Mr. Election Official, we will provide you with news releases, and you provide us with all that HAVA money, and "democracy" will prevail.

Yeah right ... I know a republican dictatorship when I see one ... and smell one ... whew! that gives new meaning to rank!