Voting Systems Panel - Dec 16 - Diebold gets thrashed"



This meeting http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/vsp_121603.pdf was amazing, to say the least. You want to talk about vindication of the "hysteria" over Diebold? Well, this was it!

Last month the State of California ordered Diebold to cooperate with, and to pay for an audit of their installed hardware/firmware/software versions statewide. Today partial results of that audit were released, and it was a doozie...

In the middle of the meeting, SoS Kevin Shelley came into the room and made an amazing impassioned speech about the electoral process being the core of democracy, and without the confidence in our elections all was lost. Addressing his staff, at the end he emphasized (I'm paraphrasing here) that "You have some important decisions to make today. I don't want Diebold to be decertified, nor do I want any other manufacturer decertified. But when you complete your analysis of the results of the audit, if the abuses were too extreme, I am fully prepared to go down that road and decertify them."

There will be a transcript available in a couple weeks, which I plan to try and obtain. Also, we video taped the meeting and I hope to get that converted to digital. His speech will be worth reading or listening to.

The audit results to date:

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The audit covered 17 counties, looking at a random sampling of machines. They could not find a SINGLE machine running certified software, and some were running TOTALLY NON-QUALIFIED code which had never even been submitted for certification. The (voting systems) panel was furious!

It was tough to take notes on all the versions that they listed, but here is a rough transcription of what was reported. The last version of GEMS that was certified by CA is 1.17.17. That version was apparently found on NO machines - NONE! 1.17.18 was conditionally certified in CA, but only after the November election; this version was found on some machines. They also found installations (which had been used in recent elections) of 1.17.20, 1.17.22, 1.17.23, and a few flavors of 1.18.18.xx. A few of these versions are certified by the Feds, but not all of them. It was acknowledged that the 1.18.18 series represented major changes, whereas the various 1.17.xx are supposedly minor changes. (I challenged that assertion during public comments based on the leaked Diebold emails.)

What was unfortunate is that Diebold was required to provide modification logs (listings of the program changes that were made for each version). That information was not delivered until last Thursday, and the State's consultant did not have a chance to completely review it yet. So the final decision was put off to mid-January.

In the mean time, the plan now is that CA will audit the other (43?) counties - since Diebold is such a mess, all of the voting machines - regardless of vendor - seem to be falling under inspection.

Bob Urosevich, the president of Diebold, was on hand for the festivities. He was joined by several staff including the Western Regional Manager, Frank Kaplan. They were called to the front of the room and confronted with very direct questions such as "how did this happen and what are you doing about it NOT happening in the future?" They plead "guilty", acknowledged that they were under pressure to install changes to accommodate county requests, and were implementing procedures to see that it never happened again.

At the end, Marc Carrel (sp?) from the Voting Panel really lit into them. He made it clear in no uncertain terms that THEY (the state) set the standards, THEY run the elections, and that vendors WILL operate within those parameters. He further emphasized that he was disgusted (his words) that they (the panel) were not taking harsher action RIGHT NOW. It was great...

So, now we wait another month and see what happens in January. All counties are under strict orders NOT to change any software of any election equipment, and the next audit report should be a hoot.

The tide is turning folks - if you are in California, I'd encourage you to join us for the next meeting. There were more vendor representatives today than citizens, and we need to outnumber them.

Also, Kevin Shelley is apparently feeling that he really went out on the limb with his decision, and that he didn't hear many thanks. Despite the dates he set don't really meet the goals we all prefer, I think we all need to send him a not of thanks for doing the right thing. His speech today was awesome - and we need to let him know we are behind him.

Cheers,

Greg

Originally posted here by Greg D at

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/htdocs/dcforum/DCForumID52/28.html