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The best electronic system you can think of is a Rube Goldberg compilation of spread sheets and Access databases.

Actually, I was thinking of the Diebold AccuVote TsX and its GEMS and BallotStation software, although that was a pretty good description of how it works under the hood. You've probably voted on it, and it has been used to elect congressmen, senators and presidents, so maybe you should know how it works.

You are either an idiot or a liar. Either way, you've proven you are incapable of discussion, intelligent or otherwise.

Ah, the classic "Well, you're a poo-poo head and I don't wanna debate wif yoo no more" defense. I bow to your superior intellect and will trouble you no more.

NC votes flip to Obama
Votes switched from Bush to Kerry

Sorry to disappoint you.

These are just errors. It goes both ways.

I didn't say I was comfortable with Diebold's CEO saying what he did...but he didn't say he would "do anything to help the Republicans" (your obvious implication being he'd do anything, including rig his company's voting machines...even though it would take likely literally hundreds of people in the process to actually pull off what many people think happened in a coordinated fashion). What he said in a fundraising letter in his capacity as a Republican business leader in Ohio was, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president."

And even though Diebold had paper trail systems as options for many of their products, they often weren't purchased by municipalities because they weren't required by law.

And I didn't say e-voting was superior. I said that it was thought to be superior by those in Congress (many Democrats, including those who sponsored the legislation which resulted in the increases in electronic voting machines, ostensibly to make the process modern and fair). The major oversight was And if you read my post, I agreed that paper voting is the way to go, if only for a reason of maintaining confidence in the process. That alone would be worthwhile.

You can't even pretend to be informed about e-voting, at all, if you had never even seen a case of votes being "switched" to anything but Republican, when there are plenty of examples of both ways. It's just that the bloggers and activists who think it's all a vast right-wing conspiracy to steal elections are a lot louder.

I'm definitely looking forward to your reply.

BlackBoxVoting has been doing some really thorough coverage on these occurrences and I would like to point out that in North Carolina & Tennessee, people are complaining about votes flipping from McCain to Obama. Some are saying this is a serious issue and not just isolated incidents of entropy.

I'm confused as to why the people voting weren't given access to an on site authority or technician that could verify this was occurring. I guess it's also possible this is something that will only happen once rarely but enough to do damage. It could also be attention seeking or insurance to claim fraud if the other side wins.

You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say that this was the same company as Diebold.

Oh, wait, it is ...

No, it's not; it's the other one. (Diebold is the same as "Premier Election Solutions".)

cf info at eff.org

(blackboxvoting.com isn't a bad source of info, either).

"Okay, so does everyone get a second chance when they break the US constitution, or is this just for corporations?"

Bush got one, so I maybe it is limited to the Military-Industrial complex ;-) OK, he didn't "get" a second chance, he stole it, but still ...

Anyone really interested in this should read about this bill (the "Holt bill") at both http://blackboxvoting.org/ and also http://blackboxvoting.com/. Note that these two sites have very different takes on this bill!!! IMHO, they both have valid points. BBV (.org) has done a great job pushing forward the problems with the current systems and raising the visibility of the issue (and ferreting out some real doosies by Diebold, etc). However, since we're not likely to get anything better for this cycle, people should consider if the Holt bill would improve things. The danger would be that people might assume that "ok, now that we have paper trails all is OK and we can stop worrying about it."

Here in Chester County, PA we had a local house race that went to a full hand recount last year. (Chester County bucked the trend in Pennsylvania and installed optical-scan machines, where a recount is possible.) The original count had the Republican winning the PA house seat by 19 votes, and after a recount Barbara McIlvaine Smith (D-PA 156th) unseated the Republican by 23 votes, which switched control the PA house (by 1 vote) for the first time in around a dozen years to the Democrats.

. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex.html

10. Diebol

For a (slight) glimpse at the stakes of a game like this, consider the recent Robin Williams film "Man of the Year". The movie was okay, but the truly frightening thing was how likely a scandal like a rigged election, purposefully or otherwise, might take place. However, before I go into some facts I found through surfing about Diebold and electronic voting, I wanted to point out that even if it was demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bush was elected through vote fraud of some kind (not that many of us need any further convincing), it doesn't mean Kerry automatically gets to take the White House and Bush is out. What would most likely happen, along with a series of investigations and lawsuits, is the Supreme Court court would invalidate the election results and declare a new election, at a reasonable time period. Dennis Hastert would assume the throne until the new election results were confirmed but nothing Bush has done would be invalidated, at least, not right away. Even if he was fraudulently elected, he was still the de-facto sitting President and so his actions would be legal (in a manner of speaking). Congress could take some action to reverse some of his doings, but that assumes they want to in the first place. Now, on to Diebold. Found via a Google of "Diebold facts": 1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold 2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html 3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html 4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886 5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines. http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html 6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee. http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26 http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p 7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candid

When was the last time you thought your vote would be actually COUNTED CORRECTLY?

20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The USA
by Angry Girl of Nightweed.com

Did you know....

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines. http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee. http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26 http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates. http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes. http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex

He's posted it all here:

http://blackboxvoting.com/s9/

He's been around since the start of the fight.

- j

"Diebold?... Diebold?... Diebold?..."

"Anyone?... Anyone?... Anyone?..."

Forgive me all for responding to a Troll but:

They haven't come for the Jews.

No. But they've come for the Muslims

They haven't come for the Communists.

No. Because it's profitable to ignore them.

They haven't come for the trade unionists.

No. Because they no longer matter.

And they haven't come for you.

They won't bother because we don't matter.

Did you know....

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex.html

NOTE: I have been dealing with the NC State Board of Elections for about a year now, first as a technical adviser to the subcommittee that drafted the unanimously-passed law, and more recently as a citizen trying to explain to others what the SBOE did wrong here.

First, the guy the state hired to oversee the bidding, contracting, and purchasing process -- Keith Long -- is a recent Diebold employee. Second, comments from one of the other vendors indicate that the claim that none of the vendors could comply with the escrow provisions is wrong. See this story in a local paper, and note the stance of ES&S:

Election Systems and Software, another voting-machine maker, has no problem with the law as written because the company writes its own software for its touch-screen voting machines, a spokeswoman said Monday.

And remember that Diebold was the only one who took the state to court claiming that they couldn't meet the escrow provisions? Within hours of losing that case, they handed over code. Just not all of it, it seems.

There are all sorts of other problems with the certifications that I won't go into here, but the complaint from EFF is pretty straightforward.

-jdm

I don't know what's worse: the frighteningly bizarre concept of a voting machine with no voter-verified paper trail, or the small group of people who defend this literally indefensible practice. It fills me with a sense of dread every time I hear another round of this story hitting the news, and it hasn't involved anyone going to jail yet.

Unfortunately, as geeks know better than journalists, there is no sane, moral, or legal reason for paperless touchscreen voting machines to even exist. Almost everyone who is knowledgable in this discipline gets it pretty quickly - because it's extremely obvious, and also because paper is integral to secure systems everywhere, from secure logging on printers in machine rooms to ATMs and even slot machines... You just don't store things like votes on non-user-verified, let alone rewriteable, media.

In fact, if I recall, the state of Nevada was a little while ago in the awkward position of having vastly superior standards enforced for gambling devices than they had for voting machines... although I think now they are one of many states that has put this craziness under some scrutiny...

Yet there really are a few people out there (I've met some on slashdot for instance) who argue to defend this practice anyway. These days, ignorance and stupidity is no longer funny. It's becoming terrifying.

If we lived in a sane country, the people who made these machines would be prosecuted, since their level of negligence certainly rises to the level of criminal even if they have no intent of their own to rig elections, and all of the politicians and bureaucrats who ordered, "evaluated," "tested," and approved these systems should follow not long after. We would know all this, prima-facie, even if Diebold hadn't had a pants-down security incident and exposed their internal emails to the world, showing us their gaffes in first-person detail. We would know even if direct results of their incompetence weren't widely documented

The simple, bedrock need for secure voting systems, and the absolutely impeccable engineering doctrines involving voter-verified paper, are almost universally accepted among credible experts. All explained many times before, better than I could anyway. It's inconceivable there is any debate at this point. Why would we have a voting machine that was deliberately made insecure?

The most credible argument I've ever heard (relatively speaking) is, "Who would cheat anyway? You're just being paranoid."

But you all know the answer to the question of who would cheat at election time: probably, the first person who thought they could get away with it.

I don't know what's worse: the frighteningly bizarre concept of a voting machine with no voter-verified paper trail, or the small group of people who defend this literally indefensible practice. It fills me with a sense of dread every time I hear another round of this story hitting the news, and it hasn't involved anyone going to jail yet.

Unfortunately, as geeks know better than journalists, there is no sane, moral, or legal reason for paperless touchscreen voting machines to even exist. Almost everyone who is knowledgable in this discipline gets it pretty quickly - because it's extremely obvious, and also because paper is integral to secure systems everywhere, from secure logging on printers in machine rooms to ATMs and even slot machines... You just don't store things like votes on non-user-verified, let alone rewriteable, media.

In fact, if I recall, the state of Nevada was a little while ago in the awkward position of having vastly superior standards enforced for gambling devices than they had for voting machines... although I think now they are one of many states that has put this craziness under some scrutiny...

Yet there really are a few people out there (I've met some on slashdot for instance) who argue to defend this practice anyway. These days, ignorance and stupidity is no longer funny. It's becoming terrifying.

If we lived in a sane country, the people who made these machines would be prosecuted, since their level of negligence certainly rises to the level of criminal even if they have no intent of their own to rig elections, and all of the politicians and bureaucrats who ordered, "evaluated," "tested," and approved these systems should follow not long after. We would know all this, prima-facie, even if Diebold hadn't had a pants-down security incident and exposed their internal emails to the world, showing us their gaffes in first-person detail. We would know even if direct results of their incompetence weren't widely documented

The simple, bedrock need for secure voting systems, and the absolutely impeccable engineering doctrines involving voter-verified paper, are almost universally accepted among credible experts. All explained many times before, better than I could anyway. It's inconceivable there is any debate at this point. Why would we have a voting machine that was deliberately made insecure?

The most credible argument I've ever heard (relatively speaking) is, "Who would cheat anyway? You're just being paranoid."

But you all know the answer to the question of who would cheat at election time: probably, the first person who thought they could get away with it.

a bill that would require electronic voting machines to produce a paper ballot.

Good, they should. If atm machines can print a receipt so should e-voting machines. I seem to recall some years back about how Deibolt, one of the companies that makes them, said having these machines print receipts wasn't practical. Funny because Deibolt also makes atms.

Falcon

BlackBox Voting

Don't you mean those fighting to keep democracy?

Does it matter which? The head of Diebold Election Systems is Bob Urosevich, who co-founded AIS with his brother, Todd Urosevich. AIS became ES&S after a merger, and Todd Urosevich is still CEO of that company. Not only does ES&S suffer from demonstrated failures, it has the same if not more partisan ties as Diebold.

Diebold and ES&S are just two halves of the same rotten fruit. Frankly I don't give a crap which corrupt corporation snarked votes or even if those votes were enough to change the election. We must get to the bottom of this like we should for all election fraud.

Does it matter which? The head of Diebold Election Systems is Bob Urosevich, who co-founded AIS with his brother, Todd Urosevich. AIS became ES&S after a merger, and Todd Urosevich is still CEO of that company. Not only does ES&S suffer from demonstrated failures, it has the same if not more partisan ties as Diebold.

Diebold and ES&S are just two halves of the same rotten fruit. Frankly I don't give a crap which corrupt corporation snarked votes or even if those votes were enough to change the election. We must get to the bottom of this like we should for all election fraud.

do you mean http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ or http://www.blackboxvoting.com/?

Just because Diebold has said they are committed to delivering votes to George Bush and they make e-voting hardware without an auditing system that a monkey can hack is no reason to suspect everything is less then on the up and up.

This does one necessary thing, which is provide a way to prove (near enough) that the software being used is the software that the voting software company provided, that no one hijacked the delivery truck carrying the voting machine and swapped in one favorable to candidate X. (Or W, or K.)

What it specifically does *not* do is do anything to prove the actual security, accuracy of the included software when running as intended, or that it can't be used *other* than as intended, in a 99-extra-lives "cheat mode." While incrementing by one a pretty small number of piles several thousand times doesn't sound like a computationally tough job, Bev Harris and others have shown the numerous and substantial flaws that current systems have; I'm aware of only one state (Nevada) that will be requiring a paper trail for its electronic voting machines in case of a dispute over the electronic returns.

Hashes? Great! Put them on the outside of the envelope containing every scrap of the sourcecode in machine-readable form, along with documentation that you have completed the publically available test suite, please, and take a seat in the lobby. The taxpayers will get around to you in your turn.*

timothy

*Oh, if it were that simple ;)

Right now you can open GEMS' .mdb file with MS-Access, and alter its contents. That includes the audit log.
.snip..
Note however that even if we put a password on the file, it doesn't really prove much. Someone has to know the password,
.. snip..
You have to trust the person with the NT password at least

Who? Where? Please provide examples of a credible (ie. non-conspiracy theorist) source suggesting that Republicans might abuse a security hole.

"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year."
- Wally O'Dell, CEO Diebold

• Black Box Voting
• CommonDreams
• Subliminal News

It doesn't help that their lead programmer was arrested for embezzlement. There's so many holes and back doors in Diebold's software to make Windows XP default install look like Fort Knox.

If someone compromises their network and server enough to install and run a script, they've got considerably more at their fingertips.

When you have the CEO of Diebold saying "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year." why do you think the evilness has to come from outside Diebold?

Oh... It's just a line to blackboxvoting.

Check out blackboxvoting.com for more info on how these systems can be used to a candidates (dis)advantage depending on which end of the stick you receive.

Makes you feel like we're back in the era of fixed elections - oh wait - did we ever leave?

Nope. Open source is still the best way to go, along with open government. When you let people hide "stuff", and when it's connected to massive political power and heaps 0 money, that's when crimes occur. The best bet is openness, bar none. It is not perfect, but it's the best design yet.

The book discussed in the article has its own site, which might as well get its own slashdotting:

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/

There is a free online edition, which is cool. But it would probably be considered a political act to link directly to the PDF's ;-)

In case you want to buy the dead-tree edition, the site's "Order Now" link didn't work for me. There's always Amazon which should also stay up in case the main site goes down.

One recurring theme I've noticed in recent years is that the idea of a "conflict of interest" seems to be only a quaint saying that is rarely if ever applied to real world situations.

Examples include Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State also serving as George W. Bush's Florida Campaign Co-Chair, a bunch of oil industry executives deciding to annex on of the largest oil producing nations in the world, Cheney and Scalia going on hunting trips while the Supreme Court decides cases involving Cheney, U.S. Senators owning voting machine manufacturers and countless other incestuous links that even first year law students in the former Soviet Union would clearly recognize as causing the appearance of impropriety.

I mean c'mon, if you're gonna fuck us, at least *try* to be subtle about it! Is that too much to ask?

However, of note about VoteHere is that the E-voting activist Bev Harris (http://blackboxvoting.com) has few nice things to say about the company. San Francisco Indymedia is carrying her account of a recent encounter with the Secret Service over an alleged VoteHere hack.

And here's Bev Harris's opinion of VoteHere:

Okay, a word about VoteHere: This is the company that has no visible means of support. It doesn't seem to sell anything. Its board is heavily infested with defense industry types -- a former CIA director (Robert Gates, now heads George Bush School of Government); it had Admiral Bill Owens, also Vice-Chairman of SAIC and a member of the Defense Policy Board with Perle and Wolfowitz, a very close friend of Cheney; currently headed by former Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro.

VoteHere announced that it would be releasing its software for review, back in July 2003. It was planning to release it in September, and was supposed to do so to Dr. David Dill's web site. It never released the code, just a bunch of literature about its product. (It did release some, but not all, of its code this month, making a big splash about it). About a week into October, I got solicited with an email "click this link" for VoteHere software.

Now who would fall for that? Why would anyone in their right mind grab the stuff in some clandestine manner when it was being released into the open momentarily? And this is a company that never sells anything. Who gives a sh*t anyway, what its software does? It now is trying to peddle yet another alternative to a voter verified paper ballot, an idiotic solution where we turn over auditing of the vote to a handful of cryptographers who work for a private company with defense industry ties. No one I know thinks that is even a viable concept, so why would we care to examine the software these cryptographers make up?

ITAA has "gone on the e-voting offensive" to protect the industry. If Diebold is so concerned about producing voting accuracy, why did they go and hire a lobbyist like Harris Miller to protect their image?

And the services aren't cheap...." annual dues are calculated (they range from $600-$44K, depending on a company's sales. "Deliverables" will cost up to $200,000+". Why not pour that cash into securing their systems instead of their image?

Black Box Voting and Bev Harris have led the fight against Diebold and ES&S hijinks for a while now, lots of good reading at that site to get you up to speed on the issues

Black Box Voting and Bev Harris have led the fight against Diebold and ES&S hijinks for a while now, lots of good reading at that site to get you up to speed on the issues

Black Box Voting and Bev Harris have led the fight against Diebold and ES&S hijinks for a while now, lots of good reading at that site to get you up to speed on the issues

Personally, I'll keep my 65k/year job and not have to worry about having my body dragged around the streets.

No, really, at least as soon as the election is out of the way.

Anyone who is really wants some great info on Dibold, and the many flaws with electronic voting should IMO check out the following sites...

blackboxvoting.com, and blackboxvoting.org.

One of the sites is alwys up, one is often down because Dibold has been doing everything that it can to shut down the sites.

The .com site has a free PDF version of a great book called blakbox voting by Bev Harris PhD. (I'm shocked the EFF did not mention her.)

I sure have heard the term "United Nations to take a greater role" line before.

The gathering grew from December's UN World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, where the world's leaders failed to reach consensus on governing the Internet and punted the issue to a task force that is supposed to report to Annan in 2005.

When was the last time world leaders manage to reach a consensus?

It ended Saturday with a closed-door meeting of diplomats.

Transparency of internation politics.

Computer industry officials at the meeting were skeptical of a UN role, but they agreed that some kind of international body could be useful in coordinating language issues, security and getting the Internet into developing countries.

Heard that before

Most believed an international body had no right to regulate the content of Web sites, a concern for countries like China and North Korea

And not the US? Oh wait, they have DMCA

"ICANN has to be more international and it has to be more transparent," said Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, vice chairman of the UN Information and Communication Technologies Task Force.

UN Transparency = Closed Door Meetings

ICANN also chooses who controls the country codes -- like ".us" or ".uk" -- that define each country's piece of real estate in cyberspace.

The rightful code for Britain should be GB. But the British snatched UK, which should have gone to Ukraine.

It has yet to decide the future of Iraq's ".iq".

Bush's War Against IQ ;)

Twomey denies any US government influence in ICANN's work.
"I have never once seen the United States' foreign policy have any impact on this process," he said.

deja vu?

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Ok, I am going to start by saying that anyone that thinks e-polling/e-voting or any other kind of electronic voting system is accurate....you are an ignorant bastard. Politicians cheated in elections ever since the beginning of politics, all e-voting does is make it even easier to cheat. How many of you computer programmers wouldn't take a million dollars to move a decimal place over a few places? Having people count ballots is not as bad as people think it is...wouldn't you do it for a paycheck? It does not hurt anyone to have a paper ballot and people counting every single one just like they used to have to do. I have shared this website with you before, but here it is again: Black Box Voting .

I have donated money to this lady on more than one occasion. She has evidence of about seven or eight states that have FOR A FACT cheated or purposely screwed with the results and she is raising money to take every person responsible for it to court. She is what some (including me) may call a patriot. She is fighting a war that is just beginning between this power hungry government of ours and the people. There will be a new civil war some day soon, I just hope the people are on the right side and see all the facts. I bid you all good day....peace

It's not how bad the programmers are, it's how much money the politicians are paying them to cheat at election time. Black Box Voting Until electronic voting is gone, there wont be one election we can trust. What's the problem with hiring people to count them? It gives the economy more jobs!

You can bet if any of the companies have ties to Diebold or Symantec, that this will be a pro-censorship lobby, trying to pass laws similar to the DMCA to outlaw private citizens from having access to things like exploit code or diagnostic tools.

come on guys, would you really want Linux supporting your nuclear arsonal?

Or your elections?

The NYTimes article mentioned in passing the work started Bev Harris, as described in her book ,and said that "Diebold stated that the code used by the researchers, which had been taken from a company Internet site and circulated online...". What actually happened is that supposedly private code, which no one should have been able to get to, was left in a wide open FTP server. And these are the guys we're supposed to trust with our elections. At this point I can't figure out whether Diebold's lack of security is due to malice or incompetance.

You should go here and read about the over 100 separate cases where electronic voting has had problems, and in many cases those problems led to election reversals. (There's links on the right side to the chapters of the book they wrote; chapter 2 has quite a number of examples in it.)

The point is, it's not just Florida. Florida just got the attention in 2000 because the entire state's electoral votes were delivered to Bush instead of Gore due to voting hijinks (or so the theory goes). The handful of companies that supply the bulk of electronic voting machines for the U.S. have a terrible track record. Plus, the machines' inner workings are kept secret, meaning that there's absolutely no way for voters to be sure that the elections are being carried out fairly.

Bev, you might want to consider changing the "Big Story of Today" section of your website to include a reference to this story.

Oh, you mean the Diebold ATMs that got infected earlier this year? No, don't worry, they're completely secure. Just like their voting machines.

I posted this in a reply and I think its been on /. before but there is a wealth of information on this issue at BlackBoxVoting.com. If you haven't seen the site I think you will be surprised by how much clear evidence there is to various improprieties and general incompetence.