Diebold would rather loose business than disclose their software code as
required by North Carolina state law.
RALEIGH, N.C. Nov 28, 2005  One of the nation’s leading suppliers of
electronic voting machines may decide against selling new equipment in North
Carolina after a judge declined Monday to protect it from criminal
prosecution should it fail to disclose software code as required by state
law.Diebold Inc., which makes automated teller machines and security and
voting equipment, is worried it could be charged with a felony if officials
determine the company failed to make all of its code some of which is owned
by third-party software firms, including Microsoft Corp. available for
examination by election officials in case of a voting mishap.The requirement is part of the minimum voting equipment standards
approved by state lawmakers earlier this year following the loss of more
than 4,400 electronic ballots in Carteret County during the November 2004
election. The lost votes threw at least one close statewide race into
uncertainty for more than two months.
Full article
link.
One of the reasons they are giving for not disclosing the code is because the
system operates on the Microsoft Window’s operating system. They maintain they
can not give that code or all the programmers that worked on it. That is a valid
argument however I got a funny feeling it is not the Microsoft code they are
worried about but rather their actual code.
As a programmer I am wondering why a company like Diebold decided to go with
Windows instead of a more secure and cheaper system like Linux. It is no secret
amongst the tech world that Linux is a lot more secure than Windows and the fact
that Linux is “open source” means that Diebold would not have to pay a per unit
licensing fee for the operating system. As matter of fact they could get by with
paying nothing for the operating system and have the benefit of higher security
and higher customization – that is if they want those features (especially
higher security).