Diebold insider blows whistle

The Diebold insider said he was once a staunch supporter of electronic voting but was stunned by seeing repeated efforts by Diebold to evade meeting legal requirements or implementing appropriate security measures.

He has provided evidence that Diebold's upper management and top government officials knew of backdoor software in Diebold's central tabulator before the 2004 election, but ignored warnings.

Ten days before a 2002 election in Georgia Diebold was told a machine was malfunctioning and workers were told to apply a patch in a big rush.

Unfortunately the patch was not approved by the state of Georgia and it didn't actually repair one of the things that were wrong with the machine. Mysteriously Georgia voted in its first Republican governor. Diebold's chairman Wally O'Dell is a key fundraiser for President Bush.

This corroborates a claim by Diebold contractor Rob Behler that a program patch titled 'rob-georgia.zip' was left on an unsecured server and downloaded over the Internet by Diebold technicians before loading the unauthorized software onto Georgia voting machines.

Apparently Diebold has used such patches in other elections but it got caught in Georgia and California.

There is a full version of the allegations here. µ