Stealth certification and the Friday "news dump"

[MelissaB]

Stealth certification

Bob Pinzler
March 11, 2006

One of the general rules of government is that if you want to make a controversial decision you don’t really want to explain, release it at 5pm on a Friday. Even better, do it on the Friday before a holiday weekend.

The Friday night before President’s Day weekend certification by California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson of the Diebold electronic voting system for use in the upcoming primary election causes even someone who has a positive view of this technology to be concerned. If the Secretary so firmly believes in the testing that he claims was done to determine whether the system was secure from tampering, why not present that information, just as did the call for the testing, in a formal news conference.

Diebold is the poster child for public concerns about the security of electronic voting. Much of the problem stems from a statement in 2003 by the, now former, Chairman of the company, Warren O’Dell, a long time, high stakes, Republican contributor. He was, he said, going to do “everything in his power to see that George W. Bush was reelected.”

Just this last week, the Republican Governor of Maryland, a “showcase state” for Diebold equipment, stated that he "no longer confidence in the State Board of Elections’ ability to conduct fair and accurate elections in 2006." Now, we have the stealth certification in California.


More: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=6219