13 August 2003

E-Vote Machines Face Audit
By Kim Zetter
Wired News
Aug. 12, 2003

After weeks of defending itself against charges of bad programming and lax security, Diebold Election Systems is facing an independent, third-party audit of the software for its touch-screen voting machines.

Maryland Gov. Robert L. Erhlich Jr. ordered the review after researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University released a report (PDF) last month revealing numerous programming flaws and security vulnerabilities in the source code for Diebold's AccuVote-TS voting machines.

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The audit is the first to be conducted on the entire range of AccuVote-TS software -- the Johns Hopkins report focused only on software for the touch-screen terminal and not on backend software that tabulates, compiles and prints final votes.

Editor's Note: I was going to say that I'd like to give the Governor of Maryland a big old smooch for demanding this audit, until I found out he is a republican. It is hard to believe that a republican would approve of transparency in our voting system, let alone initiate it himself. Let's hope he is a different breed than the rest of the attack dogs that devour more of our freedom every day that they are allowed to stay in power. There's a lot riding on this, Gov ... don't let them intimidate you or entice you with offers you can't refuse! I know they will try to do both, but you MUST stand up for democracy!!

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