Diebold Pulls Voting Machines from North Carolina to Avoid Revealing Source Code
From The Register: It’s official: Diebold election bugware can’t be trusted.
Due to irregularities in the 2004 election traced to touch screen terminals, North Carolina has taken the very reasonable precaution of requiring vendors of electronic voting gizmos to place all of the source code in escrow. Diebold has objected to the possibility of criminal sanctions if they fail to comply, and argued for an exemption before Wake County Superior Court Judge Narley Cashwell. The judge declined to issue an exemption, and Diebold has concluded that it has no choice but withdraw from the state.
The company’s explanation is that their machines contain Microsoft software, which they have no right to make available to state election officials.
Sounds like a good reason for other states to follow suit, and require voting machine vendors to escrow their code. If we don’t have access to the voting machines’ code, then we don’t have democracy. We just don’t.
