The Secretary of the State’s Office has taken action to reduce the chance of tampering with voting machines in Connecticut by requiring three additional tamper evident seals added to the Diebold AccuVote-OS optical scanners. The problem was outlined in a recent FAQ at CTVotersCount.org – the canvass bag and plastic seal are vulnerable, while the memory card seal can be bypassed by four screws on the bottom of the AccuVote-OS. In addition advocates complained that the parallel port had not been disabled as recommend by UConn.
Two seals will be placed over the ports of the AccuVote-OS, while another placed on the side to indicate that the optical-scanner was opened by the screws.
Hats off to the Office of the Secretary of the State for swift action to address these concerns. While we doubt these seals are a perfect solution or that there is one, they are an added layer of protection, and appear somewhat more difficult to defeat than the canvas and plastic seals.
