Press Release
July 7, 2005
Announcing a Comprehensive Report on Voting Equipment Selection
How Can We Ensure the Accuracy of Vote Counts?
In June of 2005 Utah's Lt. Governor, Gary Herbert, selected Diebold DRE (digital recording electronic) voting equipment
for use in the state of Utah. He did not consult with any independent computer voting system or security experts in
making this decision.
Diebold's DRE voting system has been widely studied by computer scientists and found to be the “most reported to have
security flaws” of any voting system in recent years. It was the system used in a statistically implausible election in
November of 2002, which ousted Georgia's Governor Roy Barnes, and U.S. Senator Max Cleland, both of whom were
comfortably ahead in the polls prior to the election.
This comprehensive report was written by Kathy Dopp, who has a master's degree in mathematics with graduate-level
computer studies and is President of USCountVotes - a nonprofit with plans to build a National Election Data Archive to
detect irregular patterns of election results indicating vote miscounts.
The report presents many detailed explanations of the issues and the problems involved in using the Diebold voting
machines.
The primary problems with electronic ballot voting machines include:
• They are not secure.
• They do not provide voters with a way to ensure that their votes are being tabulated correctly.
• They do not provide a mechanism for independent recounts when errors arise.
Ms. Dopp concludes that unless the state invests more funds on the extra equipment required to perform recounts of the
voter verifiable paper record, the implementation of Diebold's DRE voting systems will be a disaster for the integrity
of our elections.
Although the state of Utah has already decided to go with the Diebold machines, its counties are still free to purchase
more reliable, secure, less costly systems should they choose to do so.
The full report is available at
And is mirrored by the New Zealand Scoop
US Count Votes has also released two short papers to help all U.S. state and county election officials:
How Can Independent Paper Audits Detect and Correct Vote Miscounts?
What Election Data can Election Offices collect and publicly release in order to Monitor Elections for accuracy?
Press Contact: Kathy Dopp, President of US Count Votes
ElectionArchive.org kathy@uscountvotes.org 435-608-1382
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Kathy Dopp
Mission: The National Election Data Archive Project plans to create a nation-wide database of detailed election results,
voter registration information, and demographic data and make it publicly available. Our goal is to use the data to
detect irregular vote counts worthy of investigation in time for candidates of any party to challenge the results.
Please donate to help implement NEDA:
USCV brochures are available: