Bob Fitrakis just returned from court for his lawsuit to stop the software patches on voting machines in Ohio. Judge Frost has not ruled on the matter yet, and at the conclusion of the hearing at approximate 10:20am he said he would issue a ruling “forthwith,”(before noon today).

Michael Duniho, retired National Security Agency master of computer security, testified by phone. Duniho stated that the software in question is also available for free on the internet, and he was not sure why the state of Ohio paid for it. He said it would have been more sensible for the stated purpose of the software to have placed it onto the secretary of state’s computers instead of the county computers. Duniho also stated that it is customary, in his experience, if the Secretary of State put "experimental" software on an election system, it is usual to require hand counts in addition, in order to ensure that the added software had not affected the accuracy of the vote count, Duniho pointed out. He also said that if a virus had been inserted through this new software, it could remain in the system. So removing the software may not remove the virus. That is why a random hand count of 5% is so important.