[Page 7: Dysfunctional Performance: The U.S. Voting Machine Debacle and the Machinery of Democracy]

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Private Purveyor of Dysfunction: Diebold

Diebold Elections Systems along with Election Systems and Software, Inc.—both owned by the Ohio based security systems giant, Diebold—are together responsible for tallying as much as 80% of votes cast in the United States (23). Diebold has long been at the center of the electronic voting controversy because of its reliance on Microsoft based code that critics claim is easily compromised (24). Diebold came under furious fire in August of 2003 when it was revealed that its chief executive, Walden O'Dell, had sent out a fundraising letter to Ohio Republicans in which he said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." A few months later a group of political activists from Swarthmore College got hold of internal communications from Diebold Elections Systems employees and posted them on the web in what they called an act of electronic disobedience (25). The memos appear to reveal numerous undisclosed security problems with Diebold systems and to illustrate a culture of cavalier disregard for election propriety on the part of some Diebold employees. When the student organization, Why War?, posted the documents on its website (26), Diebold filed a cease-and-desist action against Swarthmore College, the activists' web server. Diebold filed this action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, claiming that the postings were an infringement of copyright. After a two-month-long legal battle Diebold agreed to drop its case against the activists, leaving questions about the security of Diebold systems unanswered. Why War? continues to disseminate the memos.

In July of 2003, following the disclosure by journalist and activist Bev Harris that Diebold's e-voting security code was so secret they had found it on the Internet, security researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University announced they had discovered serious security flaws in the Diebold e-voting system. Among the flaws were ways in which individual voters could vote multiple times in a given election, and methods that would give unauthorized persons access to the entire system. The activist organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EEF) responded to the findings with this comment: "EEF supports electronic voting, but this report indicates Diebold e-voting system isn't ready for prime time...…Only with open review, vigorous security testing, and a voter verifiable paper audit trail can the public have confidence that e-voting machines will provide an actual accounting of the will of the people." (27) Diebold responded to the allegations, calling them "irresponsible," and, in a statement echoed by election officials, said such comments would undermine voter confidence. Writing in response to a similar statement by an election official in Florida, one Florida resident wrote in a recent letter to the New York Times, "When we allow state officials with strong ties to one candidate to reject independent audits of the integrity of voting machines because it would ‘undermine voters' confidence,' we are indeed undermining voters' confidence in a dramatic way." (28)