We've all heard about Acorn employees registering dead people and cartoon characters. But the truth is that they won't influence the election, because cartoon characters and dead people CAN'T VOTE. The employees defrauded ACORN when they turned in invalid registrations, but it won't affect the actual election by a single vote, barring the Return of the Living Dead. LOL However, there is a REAL threat of possible election fraud. In 2004, Diebold machines recorded 80% of our votes nationwide. Diebold has since changed its name, because of bad publicity. It is now Premier Election Solutions. Here's a look at their senior management back then.
Diebold director W. H. Timken raised over $100,000 for George Bush's 2004 campaign.
Diebold's CEO, Wally O'Dell, organized a fundraising party for Vice President Dick Cheney on June 30, 2003, raising $600,000 for the 2004 campaign. He was rewarded with a trip to Mr. Bush's ranch.
Shortly after the 2004 election, Mr. O'Dell resigned as CEO. There were rumors that he was facing criminal charges due to insider trading. After Mr. O'Dell sent several friends letters that stated that he had promised to guarantee a Bush victory in Ohio, many Democrats argued that there was a conflict of interest when the person most directly responsible for making the election machines was clearly biased in favor of the Republican party.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Diebold_CEO_resigns_after_reports_of_1212.html
Jeff Dean, former Senior Vice-President and Senior Programmer for GES, now Global Election Management Systems, the wholly owned subsidiary of Diebold, and the person who originally created the software that the Diebold machines use, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft for planting back doors in
software he created for ATMs. He formally resigned from his position at the company in 2002, but remained on staff informally as a paid consultant. His software made use of Microsoft Access software without requiring a password, which made the machines extremely vulnerable to the possibility of vote tampering.
Other top management during that election cycle included a cocaine trafficker named John Elder, a man who conducted fraudulent stock
transactions and a programmer who was convicted or falsifying computer records.
Also, while there have been several TV reports about people physically breaking into Diebold voting machines, leaked internal company memos note that there is no need to bother with actually physically breaking into the machines to rig the vote; it can be done over the phone. And the company intentionally sold Georgia, California and Maryland machines that they knew to be defective.
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2003/12/61243
SAIC analyzed the Diebold voting machines for the state of Maryland and concluded “the system, as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at high risk of compromise.” Diebold fixed the machines. Below is the new security analysis. The conclusion was that "On a scale of one to 10, if the problems we found before were a six, this is a 10. It's a totally different ballgame". Great fix, huh?
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/05/12/1647862.htm
Think that's ancient history? Well, it just so happens that, after the 2004 scandal where the officials in Cleveland, Ohio were convicted of elections fraud for rigging the recount in President Bush's favor, nobody bothered to fix the machines. However, since the new, improved version of their election machines won't be available until after this year's Presidential election, Chris Riggall, a Premier spokesman, said “there has not been a single documented case of a successful
attack against an electronic voting system, in Ohio or anywhere in the
United States.” I'm guessing that the people sitting in jail for committing elections fraud wish they had convinced a judge of that. But the truth is that he's absolutely right: Since they don't leave a paper trail, there is no way to actually document a case of voter fraud.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/us/15ohio.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Lucky me. I live in Georgia. Our whole state uses the Diebold paperless voting machines. :(
Just last month, Superior Court judge Michael Johnson denied a petition to require that the machines would be scrapped or altered so that there is a paper trail that can be used to validate the results. The assistant DA stated that the 2002 vintage Diebold machines are "State of the art" and are secure, so there is no need for a paper trail. The following link is from a local newspaper article about the decision:
http://news.mywebpal.com/partners/680/public/news924138.html
Let's hope that our votes are counted correctly this time. After the fiascos that we called the 2000 and 2004 elections, we need to change the way that voting is conducted in this country. Electronic systems are great, BUT they should be required to have security, transparency and a paper trail.