Trusting Diebold Software? Not A Chance.

As Randy mentioned last week, L.A. County's Registrar of Voters, Conny McCormack, spoke at the December meeting for Valley Grassroots for Democracy. Speaking only for myself, I wasn't very impressed with her, but one thing she said really stood out. She said, several times, that we just shouldn't worry about the proprietary software in electronic voting systems, that such paranoia and concern were unfounded because she knew of no evidence that the software had been compromised.

Unfortunately, due to my own emotions, I forgot to question her about Harry Hursti's successful hacking of a Diebold optical scanner in Leon County, Florida this May. Guess what? Additional testing in Leon County exposed vulnerability to hacking in Diebold machines:

A political operative with hacking skills could alter the results of any election on Diebold-made voting machines -- and possibly other new voting systems in Florida -- according to the state capital's election supervisor, who said Diebold software has failed repeated tests.

Ion Sancho, Leon County's election chief, said tests by two computer experts, completed this week, showed that an insider could surreptitiously change vote results and the number of ballots cast on Diebold's optical-scan machines.

Ms. McCormack, still think we're just being paranoid?

(Tip o' the hat to The Democratic Daily for the story.)