[IP] Diebold on the Hot Seat
From: EEkid@xxxxxxx
<http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63172,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1>http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63172,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
E-Vote Firm on the Hot Seat
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By <http://www.wired.com/news/feedback/mail/1,2330,0-1246-63172,00.html>Kim
Zetter
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08:34 AM Apr. 22, 2004 PT
SACRAMENTO, California -- Diebold Election Systems President Bob Urosevich
was forced to defend his company's business practices Wednesday at a
contentious meeting in Sacramento before California's Voting Systems Panel
that may result in the company's machines being barred from the state.
Faced with tough questions from VSP election officials in the first day of
a long-awaited, two-day hearing on an investigation of the company,
Urosevich, accompanied by a defense lawyer and a public relations
consultant hired specifically to see the company through its California
crisis, worked hard to convince the panel that the company has reformed its
ways and can be trusted to conduct elections in the state.
But members of the panel appeared to disagree with the company's claims,
stating repeatedly that Diebold had been less than forthcoming during the
state's nearly five-month investigation into its practices, often producing
"frivolous" documents in response to state queries or responding in an
untimely manner.
At issue is whether the state should decertify Diebold's voting systems and
bar the company from doing further business in the state as a penalty for
violating California election law. Last November, the state discovered that
Diebold <http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61637,00.html>had installed
uncertified software on its voting machines in 17 counties without
notifying state officials or, in some cases, even county officials who were
affected by the changes.
If decertified, the company would lose millions of dollars in current and
potential future county contracts. The company already has statewide
contracts with Georgia and Maryland worth $54 million and $56 million,
respectively. Other states and counties across the country are waiting to
see how California responds to the issues before it.
The panel is expected to announce its recommendation to Secretary of State
Kevin Shelley on Thursday. An anonymous source in the secretary of state's
office indicated that the panel is leaning toward decertification. The
source said the company had not helped its case by its continued resistance
to offering candid and thorough responses to queries from election
officials and the media.
"From all appearances, it acts like it doesn't give a flying fig," the
source said.
A packed audience of county election officials, computer scientists, voting
activists and activists for the disabled community, who have all been
waiting months for the hearing, sat patiently through the six-hour meeting,
during which the VSP addressed parts of a lengthy report it had released on
its investigation.
The report detailed how Diebold repeatedly engaged in "overly aggressive
marketing" of machines before its systems were federally certified,
"misrepresenting" the status of certification and implying to officials
that certification was imminent when it was not. This put several counties
in a bind weeks before the March primary when it became clear that new
systems the counties were prepping for the election still had not been
federally certified.
The panel also noted that Diebold continued to upgrade its system while
undergoing certification, thus delaying the certification process in some
cases or making it moot. The company also installed a last-minute
peripheral device in several California counties that was "not ready for
prime time" in the words of one election official, even though the company
insisted it was.
The device, a smart card encoder that programmed voting cards with the
appropriate ballot for each voter, produced major problems in San Diego and
Alameda counties during the primary when depleted batteries in the devices
<http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/county/20040310-1315-report.html>prevented
them from working properly. As a result, several hundred precincts failed
to open on time, thus disenfranchising voters who were turned away from the
polls.
When asked if the company had known about potential problems with the
battery design before the election, Urosevich insisted he learned about the
problem only after the fact. But a contract worker hired by Diebold to help
configure its systems in California told the panel that the faulty design
had caused battery problems for workers in the warehouse and that Diebold
had been aware of it before the election.
"Diebold essentially beta-tested its new smart card encoder on San Diego
and Alameda counties," said Kim Alexander, founder and president of the
<http://www.calvoter.org/>California Voter Foundation. "Potentially
thousands of voters were disenfranchised because of it."
Urosevich and his lawyer, from the Los Angeles firm of Jones Day, bridled
at suggestions that they were being less than honest about what they knew
and when they knew it.
Urosevich read a statement acknowledging problems with certification issues
and apologizing to the voting panel for any embarrassment the company may
have caused election officials.
But, he said, "There was no improper intent. Diebold's intent has always
been to assist counties to run secure and accurate elections."
He said Diebold was taking steps to ensure that the company scrupulously
complied with rules and regulations in the future. Jones Day lawyer Kevin
Dorse also took issue with the panel's suggestion that Diebold had been
deceptive about certification issues, saying that federal certification
processes were responsible for delays that were out of the company's hands.
Diebold's problems, however, were exacerbated by the embarrassing release
this week of several confidential documents leaked from its legal
correspondence with Jones Day and
<http://home.comcast.net/~texex/NewDieboldMemos.zip>posted online by voting
activists (requires download), which indicate that the law firm warned the
company last November that its installation of uncertified software
violated California election law as well as the terms of its contract with
counties. The documents, some of them dated from September 2003, outlined
strategies for how Diebold intended to answer tough questions about its
conduct over the last year and avoid legal repercussions.
Diebold spokesman David Bear would not comment on the contents of the
documents or acknowledge them as authentic, though he did refer to them as
"stolen" property.
Voting activist Bev Harris, whose
<http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,62790,00.html>discovery of the
Diebold source code online last year sparked the controversy over the
security of electronic voting systems, called for the company's
decertification.
"How many bites of the apple do (they) get? Diebold has out-and-out lied.
They've been aware that they've been behaving in illegal ways. The trust is
gone," said Harris, who was trailed to the meeting by a documentary crew
filming for the Independent channel in Great Britain.
Her sentiments were echoed by <http://www.eff.org/>Electronic Frontier
Foundation staff attorney Cindy Cohn.
"This was no momentary lapse ... or emergency situation," she said,
referring to the company's installation of uncertified software. "Breaking
California election law appears to have been 'business as usual' at Diebold."
She added that the leaked legal documents indicate that the company's
efforts over the last months "appear not to be focused upon fixing the
problem but instead on paying their attorneys thousands of dollars to find
ways to evade responsibility for breaking the law."
Diebold isn't the only firm facing decertification. In March, two state
legislators <http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,62627,00.html>called on
Shelley to decertify all touch-screen voting machines in the state before
the November presidential election and keep them decertified until the
state can obtain machines that produce a voter-verified paper audit trail.
The VSP is expected to hear testimony on this issue Thursday.
The anonymous source in the secretary of state's office said, however, that
decertification would likely focus only on Diebold.
"It looks like its pointing to possible de-certification of a particular
entity rather than a blanket decertification" of touch-screen machines, he
said.
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