EFF: After EFF Litigation, Diebold Pulls Out of North Carolina

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release

For Immediate Release: Friday, December 23, 2005

Contact:

Cindy Cohn
  Legal Director
  Electronic Frontier Foundation
  cindy () eff org
  +1 415 436-9333 x108 (office), +1 415 307-2148 (cell)

Matt Zimmerman
  Staff Attorney
  Electronic Frontier Foundation
  mattz () eff org
  +1 415 436-9333 x127

After EFF Litigation, Diebold Pulls Out of North Carolina

Raleigh, North Carolina - After a series of lawsuits led by
the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to defend North
Carolina's election integrity laws, controversial
electronic voting machine manufacturer Diebold Election
Systems finally withdrew from the state's voting machine
procurement process on Thursday.

In November, Diebold filed suit against the North Carolina
Board of Elections to try to avoid a state requirement that
vendors place into escrow all source code "that is relevant
to functionality, setup, configuration, and operation of
the voting system." Under a strong new state law, this code
is to be available to the Board of Elections and the chairs
of the state political parties for review so that they
could look for security vulnerabilities. EFF intervened in
the case on behalf of local voter integrity advocate Joyce
McCloy and succeeded in convincing the judge to dismiss the
case and require Diebold to comply.

Despite Diebold's open admission that it could not meet the
state requirements for voting machine integrity, the Board
of Elections later agreed to certify Diebold. EFF filed
suit against the Board of Elections last week, arguing that
the Board had violated its own obligations to perform
extensive security-related tests of all of the code on all
certified systems prior to certification. The court denied
EFF's motion, but Diebold was nonetheless forced to
withdraw from the North Carolina procurement process
because it did not escrow its code.

In a letter to the Board of Elections on Thursday, Diebold
indicated that it is still unwilling to comply with the
law. Instead, it offered to help the state "revise" the law
so that "all vendors will be able to comply with the state
election law."

"The purpose of election integrity law is to ensure that
votes are accurately counted, not to ensure that all
equipment vendors can comply," said Matt Zimmerman, EFF's
Staff Attorney specializing in electronic voting issues.
"The law requires voting machine transparency for good
reason. All vendors must realize that the public will not
and should not accept a process that forces them to simply
trust, but not verify, their votes are accurately counted."

By withdrawing from North Carolina's electronic voting
contract, Diebold cedes the market to competitor ES&S. The
rival company has stated that it will comply with all state
escrow requirements.

For this release:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_12.php#004286

About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and
challenges industry and government to support free
expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported
organization and maintains one of the most linked-to
websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/


    -end-

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