Diebold Documents Spark International Campaign

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 3, 2003

Diebold Documents Spark International Campaign: Will Your Vote Count?

Swarthmore, Pa. -- When American citizens step into the voting booth tomorrow, will their votes be counted? Today, with Diebold Elections Systems operating electronic voting in 37 states, the answer is a resounding "maybe." As a result of widespread security flaws and the lack of any verifiable check on their systems, Diebold cannot guarantee the accuracy of any election in which their machines are present.

An electronic campaign initiated two weeks ago by Why War? has sparked students from fifty universities nationwide to host copies of internal Diebold memoranda which demonstrate the insecurity and unreliability of their voting machines.

Why War's website has been innundated with e-mails and visitors from individuals worldwide pledging their support and offering to defy Diebold's attempts at suppression by hosting mirrors of the provocative documents.

"We've been receiving more hits than ever before," said Why War? member Micah White, who originally found and posted the memos in October. "Our goal when we started this campaign was to provide public access to this information, and we've been so successful that Why War? recently had to purchase higher bandwith to accommodate the sheer number of people who wanted to read the memos."

Why War? has built a coalition of concerned citizens across the nation who will soon be taking charge of the campaign against Diebold. "This is not a partisan issue," said Ivan Boothe, another member. "The people who have taken the initiative to host these documents come from all parts of the political spectrum."

In response to growing national interest, the coalition will soon be moving its center of operations from Why War's website, why-war.com, to a new location devoted specifically to voting issues and resisting Diebold's attempts to keep this information a secret.

Why War? believes that the Diebold documents are akin to the Pentagon Papers in their potential to reveal systemic corruption within the American election process. The task now at hand is to analyze the content of these documents.

More information about the campaign: http://why-war.com/

List of municipalities that use Diebold machines: http://why-war.com/features/diebold-campaign.pdf

Press contacts: Ivan Boothe, Swarthmore College, media@why-war.com, 267.496.6819 Joseph Lorenzo Hall, University of California-Berkeley, joehall@pobox.com, 510.918.0050 C. Scott Ananian, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, cscott@cscott.net, 617.233.1238 Derek Slater, Harvard University, slater@fas.harvard.edu, 617.493.0039 Austin Heap, Bentley College, HEAP_AUST@bentley.edu, 614.477.6579 Marquis Eusung Hwang, University of Chicago, mhwang@midway.uchicago.edu, 678.438.0137 Sechyi Laiu, Grinnell College, laiu@grinnell.edu, 641.269.3278 Matthew Hornyak, Carnegie Mellon University, matth@cmu.edu, 412.726.6968

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