Two years after her state as much as handed George Bush the 2004 election, Ohio’s Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner confirmed on November 14th, 2007, something most of the state’s voters already knew, or suspected. Announcing the results of an independent and scientific audit, Bruner stated that anyone with the savvy and know-how, with a magnet and a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) could have altered and/or compromised the election tally.
The study, demanded statewide by suspicious Ohio citizens, was commissioned after ex-Secretary of State Ken Blackwell’s exit from office. Blackwell was a one-time stockholder in the former Diebold company (now Premier Election Solutions). Blackwell was responsible for handing Diebold the contract to supply Ohio with voting machines, which was later reported during his failed run for Governor.
The $1.9 million study revealed “critical security failures” as reported by Ohio's Current Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner last Friday.
The report stated that machines manufactured by Elections Systems & Software, Hart Intercivic and Diebold, and ones used in Ohio’s elections in 2004, were vulnerable to being hacked, altered, or simply having its tabulations erased.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner went so far as to recommend that touch-screen machines used by Cuyahoga County (Cleveland metropolitan area) be dumped before the Ohio primary in March. Instead she favored paper ballots tabulated by computer. Cuyahoga County’s elections commissioner is said to be weighing the issue, and plans a vote on the 17th.
These are the very same unreliable machines, which potentially would be used to tabulate Ohio’s 2008 presidential results.
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