Election memos now hosted by 30 schools
BY MATTHEW FITTING
In the past week, computer users at 30 other colleges and universities have broken the law by possessing more than 13,000 potentially damaging memos written by employees of a national voting machine corporation, all following the initial example set by a student at Swarthmore.
In that same week, Swarthmore itself has taken further steps to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), of which it found itself in violation last week when it received two cease-and-desist orders sent from Diebold Election Systems Inc., a voting machine firm.
The orders demanded the removal of more than 13,000 memos taken from an internal Diebold Web site that was accessible to the public. Diebold, in the order, claimed that possession of the memos constituted copyright infringement.
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National media, including The New York Times and MSNBC, have been questioning the corporation more and more in the past few months regarding the quality of its product, which is used by roughly 52 percent of polling places in America. The company’s chairperson has aroused concern by raising $9,000 for President Bush personally and raising more than $100,000 from other donors for the President’s re-election campaign.
At their most potentially damaging to Diebold, the memos state that a smart card available for purchase to the public could change the number of votes registered by a machine. They also reveal that in one precinct in Florida in the 2000 Presidential elections, Al Gore received negative 16,000 votes, an impossibility on a paper ballot.
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http://phoenix.swarthmore.edu/2003-10-30/news/13404
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