Ohio Halts Electronic Voting Deployment

from the noticing-a-trend? dept

Beck writes "Electronic voting was to be deployed in Ohio statewide by March, but due to numerous security flaws found in the voting systems the state has delayed certification of the systems, possibly until 2006. Diebold's system had the most problems, but all of the systems had numerous flaws. Many scenarios were found where a person without proper authority was able to manipulate election results. The Ohio Secretary of State released a report detailing 57 security flaws. (The entire report was released, unlike the state of Maryland, which blacked out much of their report.) There was no indication in the article of whether the state will require voter-verified printed receipts. By the way, the Diebold poll supervisor password is 1111 - nationwide - which was just one of the many flaws discovered." The article actually suggests that most of the problems may be solved in 60 days and the machines may be offered again just a few months later than originally planned - so it doesn't sound like they'll require a paper trail. Also, it's pointed out in the article that all of these machines declared problematic had already been "certified" by the state, showing just how ridiculous the certification process is.
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  • identicon
    LittleW0lf, 4 Dec 2003 @ 2:12pm

    Hmmm....

    Reading the article got me wondering, Diabold is using WindowsCE or Windows2000 on their newer ATM systems, I wonder if they are using the same ultra-secure ("1111") password to protect the supervisor account on all of their ATMs as well?

    Seems to me that most people who use bad security in one product tend to use bad security in all of their products, especially with things as important as Finance or the Government. Quite frankly, this company (and their lack of security understanding and over-abundance of ego) is really beginning to scare me. Better start figuring out whether or not I am currently using any of their ATM machines so that I can stop using them.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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