Diebold Spokesman Dismisses Gaping Security Flaw in Voting Machines

From a report by Monica Davey in The New York Times regarding the recently-publicized security flaws in Diebold electronic voting machines:

David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold Election Systems, said the potential risk existed because the company’s technicians had intentionally built the machines in such a way that election officials would be able to update their systems in years ahead.

“For there to be a problem here, you’re basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software,” he said. “I don’t believe these evil elections people exist.”

That’s flabbergasting.

I agree with Kevin Drum:

The technical details don’t even matter here. A company that doesn’t believe anyone would ever try to steal an election shouldn’t be in the voting machine business. Jeebus.

★ Sunday, 14 May 2006