http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001744989_harris25m.html<snip>
Thursday, September 25, 2003 - Page updated at 10:02 A.M.
Elections chief tightens vote security
By Keith Ervin
Seattle Times staff reporter
King County's newly appointed elections chief has taken steps to reduce the possibility of computerized vote-tampering while he studies questions raised about possible security flaws in software the county uses to tally election results.
Dean Logan, who became director of records, elections and licensing services this month, said yesterday he has tightened security by restricting employee access to a key election software program and removing other software from the elections computer.
Logan also said he will ask for a formal response by Diebold Election Systems to claims that the company's vote-counting systems may be vulnerable to tampering.
"We're going to take it extremely seriously because we want to be sure that voters are confident that their votes are counted and counted as they intended them to be counted," Logan said.
"If there are problems with the software, we're going to get to the bottom of that."
Logan said he decided election security was a "legitimate issue" after internal company e-mail was posted on the Internet and discussed in a Salon.com article Monday.
The memos appeared to support reports by Renton Web journalist and author Bev Harris that election results on Diebold's GEMS software could be altered by someone using its underlying Microsoft Access software without leaving a trace in the GEMS audit log.
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much more....
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