Diebold, Incorporated today issued the following statement regarding the voting system report issued by Johns Hopkins University
Updated 7/25/03, 10:00 AM, ET

NORTH CANTON, Ohio -- Johns Hopkins University issued a report on electronic voting systems on July 23. We respectfully disagree with the researchers’ fundamental conclusions.  It is unfortunate that the Johns Hopkins researchers did not involve us or the election community in their analysis, including the Federal Election Commission, which sets standards that all election processes must follow; the federal certification independent testing authorities, which tests and impose the standards; Secretaries of State and/or State Boards of Elections, which control the voting process within their states and the county election authorities. These entities would have added important real-world experience to their analysis.  In addition, the study did not use our current software code. The code was also analyzed without knowledge of the voting machine hardware in which it is used in actual elections, which caused them to draw many incorrect inferences.

By their own admission in Section 1.3 of the study, the researchers “have not independently verified the current or past use of the code by Diebold or that the code (we) analyzed is actually Diebold code.”  It is also important to note that the clinical research focused almost solely on software code, and overlooked the total system of software, hardware, services and election processes that have made Diebold electronic voting systems so effective in real-world implementations.  For example, the study cites Microsoft Windows communications weaknesses which have been widely publicized over the past several years.  These weaknesses only apply if the voting terminals are connected to the Internet or some other public network.  This is NEVER the case.  As the terminals are not connected to such a network, there are no opportunities to exploit these weaknesses even if they exist.  In addition, many of the published weaknesses have to do with Internet browsers, e-mail programs and other Internet related applications.  No Diebold elections terminals use any of these applications.

Our elections systems products and services undergo a series of certification processes, which are conducted by federal, state and local officials, including logic and accuracy testing, and represent a sequence of security layers in place within the elections process for actual elections.  We welcome the chance to work directly with Johns Hopkins, its research team and other objective electronic voting experts to continue to ensure the integrity of the voting process.

America’s elections history has been one of continuous improvement, and Diebold has been at the forefront of creating standardized systems that ensure the highest degree of accuracy and integrity for voters, elected officials and a wide variety of electoral jurisdictions.  Our track record is exemplary as illustrated by the recent streamlined elections in Georgia, California and Maryland, among other locations.  We currently have more than 50,000 electronic voting units installed throughout the United States.