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California Lawsuit Against Diebold

February 17, 2004 by

A group of Californians has filed a lawsuit in state court against voting machine vendor Diebold, in advance of the March 2 primary election.

The complaint asks the court to order Diebold to do three main things: (1) to refrain from further violations of state election laws and regulations, such as installing uncertified software for use in elections, (2) to implement the stopgap security measures recommended by the Raba report, in time for the March 2 primary election, and (3) to implement the longterm security measures recommended by the Raba report or else to withdraw the Diebold systems from use.

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Comments

  1. Edward Bryant says
    February 23, 2004 at 8:21 am

    I am troubled by the increased chatter these recent voter machine challenges have had on the public acceptance of electronic voting systems, generally.

    I can envision secure electronic voting systems, but it seems there is a growing public perception that paper is necessary and any electronically-based system is inherently untrustworthy. I hope I am wrong.

  2. Ned Ulbricht says
    February 18, 2004 at 9:19 pm

    According to Jim Wasserman, writing for the Associated Press, “Judge Rejects Calif. Voting Challenge” (Newsday):

    Judge Raymond Cadei denied a temporary restraining order sought by a group of California voters against electronic voter machine maker Diebold Election Systems. The judge said there wasn’t enough proof of security threats to justify interfering in an election just 13 days away.

    In paragraph 49, the complaint specifies:

    49. The Diebold AccuVote OS, AccuVote TS and AccuVote TSx terminals used by all
    but one of the counties that are the subject of this proceeding all have the capability to
    electronicallyupload election results through use of a telephone modem. (Los Angeles County
    physically transports the storage media containing its precinct election results to a central county
    facility where all tallying is conducted.)

    And in the next paragraph, 50, the complaint notes MITM vulnerabilities.
    If the telephone systems were to go down in these counties shortly before the polls close, would this foil MITM attackers?