Originally published January 24 2006
Controversy surrounds e-voting certifications in North Carolina
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The North Carolina state board of elections now requires e-voting vendors to make their source codes accessible, but many vendors like Diebold are complaining that the laws impose on third parties that own part of those codes.
Watchdog groups say the state "illegally" certified systems built by two e-voting vendors just days after one admitted it couldn't meet stringent new laws about disclosing its source code.
At the heart of the issue are new rules, issued by the state's board of elections in October, that require all e-voting vendors applying for contracts with the state to deposit "all software that is relevant to the functionality, setup, configuration and operation of the voting system" and the names of all programmers responsible for its creation with a third-party "escrow agent" approved by the state government.
The rules were aligned with actions taken this summer by the state legislature, which passed changes to election laws that set new standards for e-voting machines and decertified all the state's existing systems.
The premise isn't new: Federal election officials also have broached the idea of requiring vendors to make their source codes accessible to state election boards.
The idea is that officials can compare the hash code--that is, a sort of fingerprint for a piece of software that changes when any line of code is altered--from escrow-deposited software with software they receive for their voting machines to verify that it has not undergone tampering.
But Diebold, an Ohio-based company that also makes automatic teller machines, filed a court complaint objecting to the requirements.
That's why the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a brief encouraging the court not to give Diebold special treatment, found it baffling that a mere three days later, the State Board of Elections announced it would certify Diebold anyway.
"This is an extra step the board has decided to put in to strengthen the law that we have to work with," Long said.
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