The woman who launched the controversy over electronic voting machines has formed a nonprofit consumer group that plans to investigate election officials

The woman who launched the controversy over electronic voting machines has formed a nonprofit consumer group that plans to investigate election officials who may have conflicts of interest with voting companies. Washington-based publicist Bev Harris recently formed Black Box Voting in an attempt to improve the integrity of the election process and represent the interests of voters. Harris brought attention to the perils of e-voting last year when she discovered the source code for a voting system made by Diebold Election Systems on the Internet. The code, computer scientists determined, contained serious security flaws. As a result, voting activists in California, Maryland and other states have been calling on election officials to replace e-voting systems or make them more secure. But some officials have resisted that call and vehemently defended the voting companies and their machines, raising suspicions that they may have ties to the voting companies.