David Isenberg circulated by email this morning a snip from Bev Harris at Black Box Voting:

The Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole

Manipulation technique found in the Diebold central tabulator — 1,000 of these systems are in place, and they count up to two million votes at a time.

By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.

This program is not “stupidity” or sloppiness. It was designed and tested over a series of a dozen version adjustments.

*snip*

The central tabulator is far more vulnerable than the touch screen terminals. Think about it: If you were going to tamper with an election, would you rather tamper with 4,500 individual voting machines, or with just one machine, the central tabulator which receives votes from all the machines? Of course, the central tabulator is the most desirable target.

Unfortunately, the site is down at the moment.

It’s back up. So, now you can read how these double sets of books got implemented in the system. The news is very bad. The “feature” was put in by a convicted embezzler who was head of programming at Diebold during a time when … well, here’s what Bev says:

So now we have someone who’s admitted that he’s been blackmailed over killing someone, who pleaded guilty to 23 counts of embezzlement, who is given the position of senior programmer over the GEMS central tabulator system that counts approximately 50 percent of the votes in the election, in 30 states, both paper ballot and touch screen.

And just after he is hired, multiple sets of books appear in GEMS, which can be decoupled, so that they don’t need to match, by typing in a secret 2-digit code in a specific location.

Even the suspicion of fraud, even the possibility of fraud, will throw this country into chaos. Please get word out about this security hole so it can be patched locally.

Categories: Uncategorized dw