California delaying certification of new voting machines

Wired is running a story that California has halted the certificatio process on new Diebold machines after they learned that in one county, reportedly Alameda, the Diebold machines in use in the recent recall election may have had uncertified software installed by Diebold.

Alameda County, a Democratic stronghold that includes the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, converted to all-electronic voting last year at a cost of more than $12 million. The county used the machines in state elections last year and in last month's gubernatorial recall election. The machines will also be used in tomorrow's municipal election in Alameda.

The only other California county currently using the Diebold touch-screen machines is Plumas. No one was available for comment on whether uncertified software may have been installed on machines used in Plumas.

This report is similar to reports from Georgia that, prior to the 2002 elections, Diebold patched the software on many of those machines. Software on voting machines is supposed to be certified prior to an election, and if any changes are made to the software (such as a patch would do), the software is supposed to be recertified before it can be used. In the Georgia races, questions about the software certification have come up in large part because many of the races in last years elections reported surprising results - with all the good news in favour of Republican candidates. Diebold's president is known to be a staunch Republican.

Oh, one other comment from the California article I found interesting:

Diebold officials, who were attending the meeting, seemed surprised by the announcement and expressed displeasure to several panelists afterward that it had been introduced in a public forum.

I'll bet they were. I, however, think it was the perfect place to raise the issue. The public needs to be aware of these kinds of problems, and needs to be able to see where patterns of illegal or unethical behaviour are forming.

Posted by thorswitch at November 4, 2003 05:54 AM | TrackBack