I probably should have titled this diary,
"Diebold Will Blame Election Supervisors If Anyone Hacks Their Machines," but both issues, from
this piece in today's Washington Post, merit attention.
First, on the one hand, here's the conclusion at which the election supervisor of Leon County, FL, arrives:
"Was it possible for a disgruntled employee to do this and not have the elections administrator find out?" Sancho asked. "The answer was yes."
So if you're like me, you're reading along and go, "that's who they're worried about manipulating election results? Some guy who thinks his boss hates him?" Which ... well, argh. Fortunately, he gets much better. Diebold, predictably, does not:
Diebold took a dim view of the experiments. On June 8, a senior company lawyer faxed Sancho: "You have willfully and intentionally allowed the manipulation of memory cards related to your elections. . . . We believe this to have been a very foolish and irresponsible act."
Sancho's fine response on the flip.
Here's what else Diebold had to say about the experiment:
What Sancho did "is analogous to if I gave you the keys to my house and told you when I was gone," said David Bear, a Diebold spokesman. As Bear sees it, Sancho's experiment involved giving hackers "complete unfettered access" to the equipment, something a responsible elections administrator would never allow.
Thankfully, here's how Sancho responded:
The response frustrated Sancho. "More troubling than the test itself was the manner in which Diebold simply failed to respond to my concerns or the concerns of citizens who believe in American elections," he said. "I really think they're not engaged in this discussion of how to make elections safer."
He is also critical of state officials who he believes should have caught the vulnerabilities earlier. He said that vendors such as Diebold have too much influence in the administration of elections, a view that resonated with Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, the founder of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition. Sancho is "truly an advocate for voters," she said. "What he is doing in Leon County goes completely against the grain of county election commissioners elsewhere, who are allowing vendors to dictate how to run their own elections."
It's an interesting question here, namely, the extent to which elections can or should be secured by election officials vs. the machines they use. But it's surely more complicated than the Diebold rep tried to paint it ...