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Fla. voting machines still found flawed

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From the Associated Press

Florida’s optical scan voting machines are still flawed, despite efforts to fix them, which could enable poll workers to tamper with election results, according to a state-ordered study obtained Tuesday by the Associated Press.

At the request of Secretary of State Kurt Browning, a Florida State University laboratory went over a list of previously discovered flaws to see whether the machines were still vulnerable to attack.

“While the vendor has fixed many of these flaws, many important vulnerabilities remain unaddressed,” the report said.

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The lab found, for example, that someone with brief access to a machine could replace a memory card with one preprogrammed to read a candidate’s votes as counting for another.

“The attack can be carried out with a reasonably low probability of detection assuming that audits with paper ballots are infrequent,” the report said.

Browning asked the voting machine maker, Diebold Elections Systems, to address the problems by Aug. 17, and he expressed confidence that the company would do so before next year’s primary election.

“To Diebold’s credit, they have come to the table and been willing to get these changes made and get them made timely,” Browning said.

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