Judge rejects challenge over N.C. voting equipment (Diebold wins one)

The State Board of Elections followed the law in choosing the vendors that can sell voting machines in North Carolina, a trial judge ruled Wednesday, rejecting the arguments of a civil liberties group challenging the decision.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation contended that the board and its experts who picked the vendors didn't examine some software that belongs to third parties such as Microsoft Corp.

Superior Court Judge Ripley Rand denied a request by the foundation to prevent the three firms from selling voting equipment until all the software is reviewed.

The software review "was pursuant to a reasonable reading of the statute," Rand said in denying the foundation's motion to block the board's certification of Diebold Election Systems and Election Systems & Software. A third firm certified, Sequoia Voting Systems, has since withdrawn.


http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/13459186.htm

This ruling doesn't mean the election board chose correctly, only that it followed the proper procedure.

As more hack tests are performed and word gets around, I expect the board will follow the correct procedures to dump Diebold.

They're in bed with the manufacturers' representatives. Check out NCvoter.net

California just rejected Diebold out of their state, so if more states do this, say, if Florida finally decides to do the same, it will certainly become a bandwagon other states may feel compelled to jump on. OF course, I'm not convinced Florida will kick em out very soon. I hope as much, thoguh.

officials actually did a HANDS ON inspection of the machines are the states that have rejected them?

David Allen
www.blackboxvoting.com

They claimed we were reading too much into the law that it was never intended that the BoE actually had to examine the code itself, which is a bloody lie. When we discussed code review, the BoE side wanted to be able to accept ITA's reports on the soundness of the software. We argued that the ITA's weren't independent (they work for the vendors and their guidelines are set by The Election Center which takes money from the vendors) and couldn't be trusted. Also, since the ITAs REFUSE to disclose the testing methodologies we had no way of knowing if they software met the requirements spelled out in the law.

It was the consenusus of the committee that the SBoE must be personally involved in the code review, even if it hired an outside agency. Also, the BoE was supposed to make the report PUBLIC, which it has still failed to do.

This ain't over.

David Allen
www.blackboxvoting.com