Open Letter to NC County Leaders and Officials,

Before making final decisions on voting equipment, please consider the pervasive argument and disturbing evidence I am putting forward in this letter. Diebold has put on a slick sales pitch for North Carolina counties, but we must not be deceived by their misrepresentations. Diebold has been in the news quite a bit lately and the situation is not good. North Carolina voters and election officials deserve better than to be sucked into the dangerous territory of Diebold-run elections. Even for those who have used Diebold in the past without too many problems, please understand that purchasing Diebold is like playing Russian roulette; the certain outcome is systemic malfunction and equal-opportunity for fraud. Diebold has left the door open for anyone, of any political affiliation, with a deviant desire to rig an election, a golden ability to do so. This is not part of some ridiculous conspiracy theory; it is a reflection of solid evidence.

Diebold’s AccuVote OS was in use in Leon County, FL until last week. The election director there, Ion Sancho, used and supported Diebold. Reacting to those who said Diebold systems were vulnerable to hacking and fraud, Mr. Sancho allowed activists and a computer scientist to try to rig an election. The results were astounding: Not only were Diebold’s machines able to be hacked into and the outcome of the election reversed, no evidence of a breech was left behind. Had this not been a test, this could have been an election that mattered to all of us and our nation. Those who allow Democracy to be susceptible to subversion either through willful malice or through ignorance and wishful thinking (“It won’t happen here”), risk destroying the very fabric of our nation that so many of our brave men and women have died to protect. This issue transcends political ideologies in this nation. This is about protecting the essence of our Democratic way of life. Read the story: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13410061.htm

Before you think about allowing Diebold’s new touchscreen machines, the AccuVote TSX, into your county, take the time to review how it has preformed. In a test that was only five hours and 20 minutes long, Diebold machines experienced a 30% fail rate, with crashing software, printer jams, blank ballots, and lost votes. Read the California Secretary of State’s report: http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/vstaab_volume_test_report.pdf

Diebold continues to talk a good talk. Their salesmen are convincing, the have hired a well-respected former lawmaker to lobby on their behalf, and they are very friendly. However, this is no substitute for the performance of their machines. Diebold’s CEO resigned last week and the company was hit with a class action securities fraud lawsuit related to lying about security failures and vulnerabilities of their election equipment. The veil is being lifted. Do not fall victim to the wolf in sheep’s clothing. We must stand up now and say no to Diebold no matter what assurances or promises they try to trick us with.

Republican, Democrat, or whatever our affiliation, the survival of our way of life depends on well-placed confidence in our election system. We all have walked astray at some point in our lives, but now is the time to open our eyes, realize the gravity of the situation, and free ourselves from the intoxication of complacency and the deception of misinformation. Do the right thing: keep Diebold out of your county.

God bless you and God bless this nation.

Sincerely,

Joseph Waymack

Elizabeth City, NC