Adrift at Sea —Dan’s blog on dankim.com

According to this Freedom to Tinker blog article, a month ago, Princeton University released a paper describing how the Diebold electronic voting machines could be infected by a computer virus that could alter the vote tallies via their memory card.

According to Edward Felten, Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University, “Diebold has repeatedly stated that this type of security breach is virtually impossible due to security practices employed by the vendor and election officials.”

However a new video from Cuyahoga County, Ohio, shows how memory cards that are to be used in the upcoming elections were stuck into ordinary laptops, which could possibly infect the cards with a virus, contrary to Diebold’s statement. You can view the video here. Obviously, the threat of a computer virus infecting the electronic voting machines is far higher than Diebold is willing to admit.

Given the high incidence of viruses, and the vulnerabilities of Windows-based machines, the possibility of the cards being infected is rather high. Most computer anti-virus vendors are not looking for a memory card specific virus that could target the electronic voting machines.

Given the lack of a verifiable audit trail, this shows that the best “security practices” of the election officials could indeed compromise the electronic vote accuracy.

Is it possible that Diebold has intentionally made any audit of the actual votes impossible to reduce the risk that vote tampering would be detected? Given the bold statements by Diebold’s CEO and the continual revelation of security flaws and problems with Diebold’s electronic voting machines, it seems more and more likely his statements were more than mere boasts.