Backdoor Man

Recently, a security flaw was discovered in the Diebold touch screen voting machines. Diebold states that this security hole, or backdoor was intentionally created to quickly update the machines in the event of a problem.

This backdoor mechanism was created by a programmer in order to bypass security on the systems. Bypassing security on any system warrants the auditing and controls useless, making it impossible to guarantee that the data, in this case, the vote counts are accurate.

From a ZDNet post, David Bear of Diebold says:

"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."

I guess he’s just not aware of the concerns we have in Ohio.

The use of backdoor systems in corporate America are not acceptable and should not be accepted in our elections. These backdoors destroy the integrity of the systems we use.

Ballots are set months in advance and there is absolutely no reason why the voting machines would need to be upgraded on election day. The machines should be certified in advance and if they are worried about a machine failing on election day, that’s why you have backups.