<<http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/7849090.htm>>
... Lucky he was there. For an unknown reason, the computerized tally program had begun to award votes for Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to Burton, a socialist from Southern California. Similar mishaps have occurred across the country since election officials embraced electronic voting in the wake of the Florida vote-counting debacle of 2000. ... Alameda County officials still don't know why the computer program failed on election night. In fact, they only discovered the malfunction because they could compare the paper absentee ballots the software was counting to the computer's tally. The rest of the county's voters cast electronic ballots. Nor were election workers aware at the time that their touch-screen machines were running unauthorized Diebold software in violation of California law, as a state investigation later discovered. ``There was something in the software,'' said Elaine Ginnold, assistant registrar of voters for Alameda County. Alameda County officials refused to allow the Mercury News to review the software code used to test its electronic voting system, saying it was a Diebold trade secret. ... ------ "If voting could really change things, it would be illegal." - Diebold Internal Memos _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
