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PA County's Voting Machines Impounded Following Complaints.

There's trouble in River City:
Generally touching a candidate's name after a voter has already selected the straight-party ticket option will de-select the candidate on that machine, not select it.

Northumberland County uses AccuVote paperless touchscreen machines made by Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems).

-- Tom

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More Votes Lost By Diebold; Discovered By Unique Voting Transparency Project.

-- Tom

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Voting Machine Audit Logs Raise More Questions about Lost Votes in CA Election.

Computer audit logs showing what occurred on a vote tabulation system that lost ballots in the November election are raising more questions not only about how the votes were lost, but also about the general reliability of voting system audit logs to record what occurs during an election and to ensure the integrity of results.

The logs, which Threat Level obtained through a public records request from Humboldt County, California, are produced by the Global Election Management System, the tabulation software, also known as GEMS, that counts the votes cast on all voting machines -- touch-screen and optical-scan machines -- made by Premier Election Solutions (formerly called Diebold Election Systems).

-- Tom

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Diebold voting system sported 'delete' button: report.

"...some versions of Diebold's vote tabulation system, known as the Global Election Management System (GEMS), include a button that allows someone to delete audit logs from the system."

-- Tom

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Kentucky e-voting fraud manipulated voters, not machines.

Six people have been indicted in a Kentucky scandal that involves rigging an election by manipulating vote totals in electronic voting machines. But the folks allegedly behind the scam relied not on high-tech hacking skills, but on old-fashioned southern charm.

-- Tom

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Diebold Admits Audit Logs in ALL Versions of Their Software Fail to Record Ballot Deletions

Startling admission made during public hearing in CA to consider decertification of the company's voting and tabulation software...

Even the audit log system on current versions of Premier Election Solutions' (formerly Diebold's) electronic voting and tabulating systems --- used in some 34 states across the nation --- fail to record the wholesale deletion of ballots. Even when ballots are deleted on the same day as an election. That's the shocking admission heard today from Justin Bales, Premier's Western Region manager, at a State of California public hearing on the possible decertification of Diebold/Premier's tabulator system, GEMS v. 1.18.19.

-- Tom

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Voting Machines and 'Calibration Drift'.

"Tuesday saw elections for school boards and city officials throughout Kansas. In Saline, ES&S voting machines in several locations were 'mis-calibrated,' and when the voter touched next to one candidate's name, the 'x' appeared next to another one. ...

-- Tom

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Voting machine expert criticizes "clueless" industry report.

An organization that represents the most prominent electronic voting machine vendors has published a study that contends that mandatory code disclosure would undermine the security of commercial voting machines. A voting machine security expert has responded and explains why the vendors' rhetoric is wrong.

-- Tom

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E-Voting Firms Recognize That Open Source Software Exists... But Seem Confused About What It Means.

We've never quite understood why e-voting software shouldn't be required to be public information. For the sake of actually allowing an open and transparent voting system, it's hard to understand how any governing body would allow proprietary software to be used. There's simply no way you can prove that the system is fair and transparent if the counting mechanism is totally hidden away.

-- Tom

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Voting System Adds Nearly 5,000 Ballots to Tally.

A software glitch in an optical-scan voting system added nearly 5,000 ballots to the tally of a South Dakota election this week. The error was discovered only after the election results were called, according to the Rapid City Journal.

The problem occurred when officials combined tallies from optical-scan machines in three precincts in Rapid City in Pennington County. The tabulation software used to combine the totals added 4,875 phantom ballots to the count. The system indicated 10,488 ballots were cast when, in reality, only 5,613 ballots existed, indicating that the glitch wasn’t simply a matter of doubling the votes.

-- Tom

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Voting Machine Company Agrees to Hand Over Source Code.

Election officials in Washington, DC, are finally going to get source code for voting machines that produced ‘phantom’ votes during the district’s primary election last September.

-- Tom

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Computer scientists take over electronic voting machine with new programming technique (w/ Video).

Computer scientists demonstrated that criminals could hack an electronic voting machine and steal votes using a malicious programming approach that had not been invented when the voting machine was designed. The team of scientists from University of California, San Diego, the University of Michigan, and Princeton University employed “return-oriented programming” to force a Sequoia AVC Advantage electronic voting machine to turn against itself and steal votes.

“Based on our understanding of security and computer technology, it looks like paper-based elections are the way to go. Probably the best approach would involve fast optical scanners reading paper ballots. These kinds of paper-based systems are amenable to statistical audits, which is something the election security research community is shifting to,” said Shacham.

“You can actually run a modern and efficient election on paper that does not look like the Florida 2000 Presidential election,” said Shacham. “If you are using electronic voting machines, you need to have a separate paper record at the very least.”

-- Tom

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Diebold Quietly Patches Security Flaw in Vote Counting Software. dated Agust 12, 2009.

Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold, has patched a serious security weakness in its election tabulation software used in the majority of states, according to a lab that tested the new version and a federal commission that certified it.


Premier Diebold Market Map

It’s not known if Premier will offer the more secure version to election officials who purchased previous software. The company did not respond to a call for comment Tuesday.

-- Tom

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Diebold impeaches e-voting unit, sells it off for $5 million.

Electronic voting machine vendor ES&S has acquired Premier Election Solutions, Diebold's e-voting subsidiary. Diebold reveals that it has been looking for options to leave the business since 2006 and is now selling off the whole unit for $5 million.

Although Diebold will no longer sell voting machines, the sale to ES&S will ensure that Diebold's flawed voting machine products will live on. ES&S suffers from some of the same afflictions as Diebold, as its own products have also been found to exhibit serious security flaws. ES&S was caught illegally selling counties uncertified voting machines in California in 2007, a misdeed that elicited a sharp response from California Secretary of State Debra Bowen.

Electronic voting machine vendors have consistently failed to deliver products that are secure, reliable, and worthy of the electorate's trust. An official statement from ES&S suggests that we can expect to see more of the same as it integrates Diebold's former voting machine subsidiary into its business.

"Moving forward, all of our customers will get the same great level of service they have come to expect," said ES&S CEO Aldo Tesi. "This acquisition is an opportunity to continue fulfilling our company's core mission of maintaining voter confidence, and enhancing the voting experience."

We can almost feel the renewed confidence surging through our bodies. Or maybe that's just bile rising in our throats.

-- Tom

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Voting machine source-code leak shows election-rigging subroutines?.

Sequoia Voting Systems hacks self in foot.

SEQUOIA VOTING SYSTEM STUDY PROJECT.

Tsk, tsk, tsk Sequoia - that's against the FEC voting system rulebook banning interpreted code, machine modified code and mandating hash checks of voting system code.

-- Tom