The Security Mentor

Found at security guru Bruce Schneier's blog.

What does it mean for a voting machine to be secure? Well, it has to resist tampering by the people who have access to it, right? You need to resist problems like election workers stealing paper ballots or official talliers monkeying with the tallying.

So what is Diebold's take on the design criteria for the machines that will count our votes?

"For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software," [Diebold spokesman David Bear] said. "I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

This is exactly like designing a bank's cash handling system on the assumption that every teller will always be honest, except that it's stupider and more dangerous.