I know I'm a broken record, but I can't help it. We're screwed. Check out this new BlackBoxVoting.org report on the massive security hole in Diebold's GEMS central tabulator system. This isn't the touch screen voting machines - which have their own problems - these are the machines that total the statewide votes collected from each precinct. The Diebold GEMS central tabulator is responsible for tabulating 50% of the votes in this country.

Issue: 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.

But this couldn't be the case, right? I mean, the guys at Diebold couldn't be outright criminals, right?

Black Box Voting has traced the implementation of the double set of books to Oct. 13, 2000, shortly after embezzler Jeffrey Dean became the senior programmer.....

Black Box Voting Associate Director Andy Stephenson has obtained the court and police records of Jeffrey Dean. It is clear that he was under severe financial stress, because the King County prosecutor was chasing him for over $500,000 in restitution.

During this time, while Jeffrey Dean was telling the prosecutor (who operated from the ninth floor of the King County Courthouse) that he was unemployed, he was in fact employed, with 24-hour access to the King County GEMS central tabulator -- and he was working on GEMS on the fifth floor of the King County Courthouse....

Jeffrey Dean, according to his own admissions, is subject to blackmail as well as financial pressure over his restitution obligation. Police records from his embezzlement arrest, which involved "sophisticated" manipulation of computer accounting records, report that Dean claimed he was embezzling in order to pay blackmail over a fight he was involved in, in which a person died.

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.

I'm not even going to get into the fact that the whole thing runs on a Microsoft Access database. (Hello?)

But okay, maybe this is wrong. Maybe Jeffrey Dean is a swell guy whose main desire in life is for a fair election. The problem is that whether or not fraud actually takes place, there is clearly going to be enough suspicion of fraud that the results of the election will not be trusted. But there won't be a paper trail (at least from all the touch screen machines,) so a full recount will not be possible, and we'll have to let the courts decide. Again.

I haven't been talking about this one. I guess because it's just too big and scary for me to even think about. But if you haven't at least heard of what is happening with Diebold, and the *serious* problems with their electronic voting machine systems, you should probably be aware.

The story is that the machines are severely compromised from a security perspective. And the company is run by a very right wing republican who has vowed to deliver his home state to Bush in 2004. And the company is going law suit crazy to shut up anyone who publicizes anything about the security flaws in their machines.

Here's a good metafilter round up of the issue.

FWIW (not much probably) I think this is for real. I think democracy, if we still have it post election 2000, is in actual danger. Of course, like I said, I'm not doing anything about it because I am too scared to really think about what's happening. But maybe you should do something about it.

Save me! Thanks.