Why would any reputable company put an easily accessible button to delete audit logs from an electronic voting machine? I think I just answered my own question by assuming that they are reputable.
I am fairly certain that this function doesn’t exist on the ATM machines that they manufacture. It would seem that Diebold considers cash more important than votes. I guess it also helped the head of Diebold, Walden O’Dell, deliver on his (in)famous promise to “helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president [Bush] next year.”
“Deletion of the records in either log would make it impossible to monitor operator access to GEMS or to reconstruct the sequence of operator access, defeating the purpose of [federal guidelines] that GEMS version 1.18.19 was required to adhere to.”
Under guidelines established by the Federal Election Commission in 1990, tabulation software used in all US elections must automatically create and permanently retain electronic audit logs of important system events while tallying votes. The guidelines state they are intended to provide a “concrete, indestructible archival record of all system activity” and are “essential for public confidence in the accuracy of the tally.”
I think that the proposed truth and reconciliation commission has a lot of work ahead of it.