Since the first time they came out, electronic voting machines have been accused of providing inaccurate information and could easily be hacked into and change the results. On the one side, proponents and manufactures insisted that the machines are secure, while opponents insisted they could be remotely “adjusted” and would like paper backup for their voting results. Many states who use electronic voting machines print paper backup forms to verify the results.

In July of 2002, Georgia’s Secretary of State, Cathy Cox (D) signed a contract with Diebold to provide electronic voting machines for the entire State of Georgia. We became the first in the nation to go totally electronic voting. In August 2003, Walden O’Dell, then CEO of Diebold, announced he became the top fundraiser for President Bush and the Republican Party and said he would do whatever it takes to get Republicans elected. Pretty scary comment from the person whose company builds the very machines our votes get recorded on.

(Break)

Shortly after that, I had a chance to ask Cathy Cox directly that if the CEO of Diebold promised to get Republicans elected, then how can she assure voters that our votes were safe? Cox insisted the Diebold machines had no problems and our votes would be counted correctly. She wouldn’t even consider adding paper backup ballots in case of a dispute.

I then asked her two questions that she did not want to answer, or maybe could not answer. I asked, “Can Georgia technicians open the machines and look at the internal workings and can Georgia programmers program the machines?” I asked her these questions more than once in face-to-face conversations and in E-mails. She staunchly defended the integrity of the Diebold machines; machines that could only be worked on and programmed by Diebold technicians. It never gave me a good feeling that my vote would be counted correctly. In November of 2002, Republican Saxby Chambliss defeated the popular incumbent Democrat, Max Cleland for a Georgia Senate seat, even though the poles showed Chambliss behind. Coincidence? I think not.

Who says electronic voting is safe? Not me. I have worked for a major telecommunications company for 19 years now and I have seen advances in communications and electronics that make the original Star Trek series look silly in comparison. We have become a wireless world, making each person highly mobile and free. I have a new Sprint Instinct phone that has all the same features as the Apple iPhone, and some extras. The iPhone can do a few things the Instinct can’t and visa versa. You can read all of your E-mails, surf the web and even watch CNN live on the Instinct. If you can imagine it, computers and phones on the market today can do it, without wires. But, they can’t make coffee yet.

In this completely Wi-Fi world, why is it hard to believe that voting machines like the ones built by Diebold are immune from someone going into them remotely and making changes through wireless access? I sure can’t.

On September 8, 2008, Judge Michael Johnson heard the case filed in 2006 by Voters Organized for Trusted Election Results in Georgia (VoterGA) challenging the State of Georgia on the use of electronic voting machines in Superior Court of Fulton County. VoterGA lost the case. Georgia and Maryland are the only two states who still use the unverifiable Diebold AccuVote-TS R6 machine; however Maryland will be throwing them out after this election to go back to optical scanning machines. This mean that Georgia will still be venerable from remote access to our voting machines. The Republican controlled state government is probably smiling about that and thanking former Democratic Secretary of State Cathy Cox for not installing paper backup.

I have to go, now. I have a text coming in to my Instinct phone and I have to remotely send this article to a friend over a Wi-Fi network.