  The beginning of this urlLink article in Wired really sets the tone for some of the problems we can expect to arise in this November's election cycle. As alarm mounts over the integrity of the ATM-like voting machines 50 million Americans will use in the November election, a new federal agency has begun scrutinizing how to safeguard electronic polling from fraud, hackers and faulty software. But the tiny U.S. Election Assistance Commission says it is so woefully underfunded that it can't be expected to forestall widespread voting-machine problems, which would cast doubt on the election's integrity.
The commission -- which on Wednesday conducts the first federal hearing on the security and reliability of electronic voting -- laments its predicament in a new report. "We've found some deeply troubling concerns, and the country wants to know the solution," said DeForest B. Soaries Jr., a Republican and former New Jersey secretary of state named by President Bush in December to lead the agency. How about California urlLink banning the Diebold machine and recommending fraud charges be filed against the company? California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley ended five months of speculation and announced Friday that he was decertifying all electronic touch-screen voting machines in the state due to security concerns and lack of voter confidence. He also said that he was passing along evidence to the state's attorney general to bring criminal and civil charges against voting-machine-maker Diebold Election Systems for fraud.
"We will not tolerate deceitful tactics as engaged in by Diebold and we must send a clear and compelling message to the rest of the industry: Don't try to pull a fast one on the voters of California because there will be consequences if you do," he said. Shelley said the ban on touch-screen machines would stay in effect unless and until specific security measures could be put in place to safeguard the November vote. "Revelations regarding touch-screen machines have shaken public confidence in this voting technology," Shelley said, referring to four computer-science reports released in the last year that showed the machines to be badly designed and vulnerable to hacking. "It is my foremost responsibility to take all steps necessary to make sure every vote cast in California will be accurately counted. " More urlLink background on the California Advisory panel's findings about the Deibold voting machine and the questionable business practices the company employed. The state had conditionally certified the TSx in December so that counties that had already purchased the machines could use them in the March primary.
But the company installed a last-minute peripheral device in several California counties that was still being de-bugged days before the March primary. The device, a smart card encoder that programmed voting cards to be used with the TSx, malfunctioned and produced major problems in San Diego and Alameda counties the morning of the primary. Several hundred precincts failed to open on time, thus disenfranchising voters who were turned away from the polls.
The decertification recommendation goes to California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, who has until April 30 to decide how to act on it, a date that falls within the six-month advance notice that the state must give counties to take machines out of commission before an election. The panel also recommended that Shelley ask the state attorney general to examine the possibility of bringing civil and criminal charges against Diebold for violating California election codes, which state that vendors cannot change software without notifying the secretary of state's office. The codes also say that no vendor can install uncertified software on voting systems. Last November, the state discovered that Diebold had installed uncertified software on its voting machines in 17 counties without notifying state officials or, in some cases, even county officials who were affected by the changes. 
