Letter to Terry Goddard re: Diebold Contract

[fabius]

I just wrote the following letter:

Attorney General
Terry Goddard
Office of the Attorney General Department of Law
1275 West Washington Street Phoenix, AZ 85007


Dear Terry:

If I may presume on our previous acquaintance, because once in the early 1980’s we were comrades in arms in Arizona Young Democrats. My name is ********, and you may recall my friends and I delivered the Pima County Young Democrats’ votes to support Sam Goddard for State Party chair in 1982.

That’s ancient history, and I moved to Oregon in 1992. But recent events have gotten me active in politics again. Of particular concern to me is the phenomenon of computerized voting. The voting machine industry is encouraging states and counties change to electronic “touch screen” and other systems that have no paper trail. Furthermore, a number of highly qualified computer software experts have discovered that one (and possibly more) of these systems is insecure and definitely vulnerable to hacking.

This means that sharp political computer operatives could conceivably add or subtract votes at will during an election and never be detected. Without a paper trail there would be no possibility of a recount.

It has now come to my attention that last week, Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer awarded Arizona's single source $53 million HAVA contract for opti-scan and DRE systems to Diebold, Inc. Diebold is the voting machine vendor discovered to have an insecure system vulnerable to hacking.

I strongly encourage you to investigate this matter. Grounds for investigation may be as follows:

The award violates the state requirements published in the State's Request for Proposal (RFP). In it, a section on Security (item 5.4.7.3) asks: “Has the system experienced any security-related exposures? If so, describe the exposures and what corrections were made."

Consider:
A. The Diebold system has suffered security related exposure by having the GEMS source code copied off an unprotected Diebold website and spread all over the internet, and by having the undocumented and possibly illegal back door access and audit trail editing capabilities embedded in the GEMS source code exposed and widely published in the Harris reports.
B. The only acceptable correction to that sort of security exposure would be a rewrite of the code and a recertification to 2002 (as mandated by HAVA) standards.
C. There has not been sufficient time between the occurrence of these security exposures and the award of the Arizona contract to allow for that rewrite of the source code and recertification. Therefore, either:
D. Diebold did not disclose the security exposures as required by the RFP; or
E. Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer awarded the contract to Diebold knowing about the security exposures but not requiring adequate corrections.

If you want to protect the voting rights of Arizonans, I think it is of the highest priority that your office immediately investigate the award of this contract. If a worse fiasco than Florida 2000 is to be avoided, investigating the Diebold contract seems to me of the utmost importance.


Sincerely,



(name redacted to stay out of Diebold lawsuits)

[SharonAnn]

1. Good job! nt

nt

[Vadem]

2. Excellent letter, Fabius!

Let's hope you get a response from the AG! Keep us posted.

[Eloriel]

3. This definitely needs a kick

:kick:

Eloriel

[Gordon25]

4. Outstanding

Thank you, fabius, very, very much. This letter will give credence to our consumer complaints as they come in. Our campaign call to action is also now on arizonaindymedia here: http://arizona.indymedia.org/news/2003/09/12077.php

Thanks again for you eloquent words, and for calling in an old favor for our cause. I am in your debt.

Gordon25

[John_H]

5. Is the AZ contract available to review?

?