Diebold consultant admits to changing software in 2002 election.

Clammyc at Booman Tribune:

Now, I am not putting on a tin foil hat here, as we have seen over the past few weeks how easy it is for the Diebold machines to be altered and hacked, but I wanted to point something out from the upcoming article that may get lost in the hullabaloo of RFK Jr. exploring the potential for hacking the 2006 election.

What is interesting here is that the Diebold consultant, Christopher Hood has been outspoken about the good things that Diebold machines can do. He is quoted here talking about voter outreach and also is quoted talking about how many voters have only heard the criticisms of Diebold.

So when he speaks up, I think it lends some credibility, or at least more than someone who has always been a critic. Further, the Raw Story excerpt describes Hood as "an African American whose parents helped fight for voting rights in the South in the 1960s" and was "proud to be promoting Diebold's machines".

But Hood talks of what I would certainly call "funny business" going on in Georgia during August 2002 right before the primaries. Things like software patches that were not approved by the State, directions from Diebold's election unit president to not share information with the county authorities, and early morning changes to machines on (I believe primary) election day.

The company was authorized to put together ballots, program machines and train poll workers across the state - all without any official supervision. "We ran the election," says Hood. "We had 356 people that Diebold brought into the state. Diebold opened and closed the polls and tabulated the votes. Diebold convinced (Georgia Secretary of State Cathy) Cox that it would be best if the company ran everything due to the time constraints, and in the interest of a trouble-free election, she let us do it."

So basically, there was a deal where Diebold had free reign over the entire Georgia election process for 2002. Which included training the workers, setting up the machines, counting the votes, and, well, just about everything else.

And then Diebold's election unit president stepped in and made the story even more interesting:

Then, one muggy day in mid-August, Hood was surprised to see the president of Diebold's election unit, Bob Urosevich, arrive in Georgia from his headquarters in Texas. With the primaries looming, Urosevich was personally distributing a "patch," a little piece of software designed to correct glitches in the computer program. "We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn't do," Hood says. "The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done."

And thanks to the agreement between Cox and Diebold, there was no need to certify the change to the software, since Diebold was pretty much running the election process - at least the administration of it.

Read the entire piece