VoterAction Files for CA Injunction to Ban Diebold TSx

VoterAction Announces the Filing of a New Motion of Preliminary
Injunction in State Court
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Tuesday 08 August 2006

In a just issued Press Release, VoterAction has announed that
California voters are challenging the use of the Diebold TSx touch
screen voting system and that they have filed a motion for
preliminary injunction in state court. This announcement follows the
July 18 announcement that an attempt by the state to move the
original suit from the state courts to federal court had failed. The
press release follows:

California Voters File New Motion of Preliminary Injunction in
State Court to Halt Use of Electronic Voting Systems

Hearing to take place in time for November election.

San Francisco, CA, August 8, 2006 - California voters challenging
the use of Diebold touch screen voting systems today filed a motion
for preliminary injunction in San Francisco Superior Court, asking
the Court to prohibit purchase or use in California of Diebold
Accuvote TSx electronic voting machines for use in the November 2006
general election. A hearing on the motion for preliminary injunction
is expected on August 31, 2006. Defendants in the case are Secretary
of State Bruce McPherson and elections officials in 11 California
counties. Elections officials in eight other California counties have
been dismissed from the suit, after they signed affidavits that they
will not use Diebold touch screens for the November elections.

"This case will be the first time the California Courts have
looked at the evidence on the myriad defects of this touch screen
electronic voting system, and its failure to satisfy state law for
election security. If the California voter plaintiffs win, the
Secretary must immediately decertify the problem-plagued machines,
and counties will still have time to find an alternative for use in
the November election," said John Eichhorst, co-counsel for the
plaintiffs, and a partner at the law firm of Howard, Rice,
Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin in San Francisco.

The lawsuit, Joseph Holder v. McPherson, et al., No. CPF 06-
506171, was originally filed on March 21, 2006. In April, the
Secretary of State and counties attempted unsuccessfully to have the
case transferred permanently to federal court. United States District
Court Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong in Oakland ruled on July 18, 2006
that this "removal" of the case from the state court was "legally
improper" and remanded the case to state court.

"This case is a powerful and well-documented challenge to the
Secretary of State's certification of the Diebold touch screen
machines, which is illegal because they cannot be made secure,
reliable, or verifiable. Unless the Court acts to prevent it, we are
headed for a train wreck in the November election," said Lowell
Finley, co-counsel for the plaintiffs and co-director of Voter
Action.

The voter plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction is
supported by sworn declarations from leading computer security
experts. Among their findings is that it is easy to install malicious
code permanently on the Diebold TSx, and that once installed, this
code can defeat any attempt to secure the machine afterward. All a
person needs is to obtain a standard PC memory card, to name the
files according to Diebold's naming scheme, and to gain brief
physical access (a minute or two) to the TSx machine. Many
individuals-including Diebold employees, county employees and poll
workers - have sufficient access to TSx machines to do this. The
system will then automatically install the malicious code which can
enable further attacks (such as vote reallocation), protect itself
from forensic investigation, and defeat any security measures added
at a higher level (such as "hash code" checking). This severe
vulnerability went undetected in several rounds of federal and state
testing.

"California voters have a right to a transparent, accurate, and
verifiable election. The only way to protect this right is to
prohibit use of Diebold touch screen electronic voting machines,"
said Holly Jacobson, co-director of Voter Action. "Optical scan paper
balloting presents a less expensive and more secure solution, which
is why New Mexico, Michigan and hundreds of counties have switched to
this system".

The voter plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction is also
supported by testimony of computer security experts and professors,
Dr. Douglas Jones, University of Iowa, and Dr. Avi Rubin, Johns
Hopkins University, both of whom agree that the Diebold touch screen
voting system is highly vulnerable to tampering that could alter
election results. The motion is also supported by the sworn
declaration of Noel Runyan, an electrical engineer with 30 years of
experience designing assistive devices to enable disabled voters to
have full access to computers. Mr. Runyan explains why Diebold's
touch screen machines do not meet the disability access requirements
established by the California Legislature.

Voter Action, a non-profit election integrity organization, is
supporting the legal action in California. Voter Action supported
successful litigation in New Mexico to block purchase and use of the
types of voting machines that are most prone to error and most
vulnerable to tampering, and is currently supporting similar efforts
in Arizona, Colorado, and other states.