I've blogged this before. I feel that this is the biggest story happening now. This goes to the heart of democracy in this country. As Bev Harris has ponted out before, voting should not be privatized. (This is a Salon article. Look at the ad. It won't kill you. Ignoring this issue can.)

An open invitation to election fraud
Not only is the country's leading touch-screen voting system so badly designed that votes can be easily changed, but its manufacturer is run by a die-hard GOP donor who vowed to deliver his state for Bush next year.

But according to Bev Harris, a writer who has spent more than a year investigating the shadowy world of the elections equipment industry, the replacement technologies the court cited may be worse -- much worse -- than the zany punch-card systems it finds so abhorrent. Specifically, Harris' research into Diebold, one of the largest providers of the new touch-screen systems, ought to give elections officials pause about mandating an all-electronic vote.

Harris has found critical flaws in Diebold's voting software, and she's uncovered internal Diebold memos in which employees seem to suggest that the vulnerabilities are no big deal. The memos appear to be authentic -- Diebold even sent Harris a notice warning her that by posting the documents on the Web, she was infringing upon the company's intellectual property. Diebold did not return several calls for comment.

The problems Harris found in Diebold's system are perhaps the best proof yet that electronic voting systems aren't ready for prime time. Indeed, the vulnerabilities in the software, as well as the internal memos, raise questions about the legitimacy of the California recall election. In its ruling, the 9th Circuit Court put the election on hold until the six counties that currently use punch-card systems -- six counties that comprise 44 percent of the state's voters -- upgrade their systems. On Monday, 11 judges on the 9th Circuit reheard the recall case; they may very well overturn the decision halting the Oct. 7 election. If the recall vote is put on hold until March, however, many may wonder whether to trust the results: Four of the six punch-card counties -- including the largest, Los Angeles and San Diego -- have plans to upgrade to Diebold machines by March.
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Diebold feels the heat. Sends out attack lawyers

Blackbox Voting.org is Bev Harris' site exposing the security vulnerabilities of the Diebold voting machines.

As of 8:46 p.m. PST, the site has been pulled, with the following message:

Due to a dispute with Diebold, Incorporated, and its wholly owned subsidiary Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (collectively "Diebold"), which is claiming links to certain materials that do not reside on the blackboxvoting.org website constitute copyright infringement, blackboxvoting.org has been temporarily disabled.
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CalPundit is starting to take notice...

BLACK BOX VOTING

You know, I haven't gotten hugely excited about the Diebold voting machine story. You know, the one about how it's easy to hack into their code and maybe tamper with it to rig an election. Sure, it seems like a problem, but I didn't want to get too tinfoil hattish about the whole thing.

Well, break out the Reynolds Wrap! Apparently it's serious enough that Diebold has managed to shut down blackboxvoting.org, Bev Harris' site devoted to exposing Diebold's problems, by bullying her ISP. Note to Diebold: nobody really took the problems with the Corvair all that seriously until GM hired a couple of goons to hassle Ralph Nader. It's the coverups that get you.

Oh, and blockboxvoting.com is still up. It's really hard to shut down the whole web, guys....
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