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Oh, and unless Diebold manufactured scantron-style counters and are responsible for printing provisional ballots with no addresses, I think your little rant is just slightly misplaced.

Yes, in fact they do manufacture optical "scantron-style" scanners, though the likely vector for tampering is the central "PC" computers, running Windows and Diebold's GEMS software which count the e-votes from the various Diebold optical and touch-screen machines.

The Diebold one I used looked like this: http://www.diebold.com/dieboldes/accuvote_ts.htm , which is quite different than the one you described (it says Diebold in big letters across the top and is a touchscreen based deal - no LEDs, buttons, or bells). I was actually quite pleased with the interface (but would much rather have it really just print out a scan-tron type sheet to be later read by an optical scanner instead of recording the vote on a smartcard) - it would have been pretty hard to vote for something by mistake. I can't comment on how well they held up over the course of the day, but there didn't seem to be any problems while I was there.

That's still interesting/confusing/disturbing that even though state law requires a paper trail you're not really getting one (like another poster in this thread said - a paper log printed at the end of the day shouldn't count as a paper trail).

Troll. The CEO made no such promises

It's Diebold, not Dibold.. your attempt to spread your F.U.D. about electronic voting is only making your cause look childish ...

No, they are not nearly as reliable as the real thing

As en ex-employee, I'd agree that diebold has shit for software, but to their credit they do have some neat stuff in their physical security services.

The problems with e-voting are user error? That's funny I thought it had something to do with miscounted votes, buggy or crashed systems and clearly biased voting machine companies.

Hell! If it was user error this whole time then the solution is obvious -- we need a phone in every voting booth with a direct line to some Level 1 tech support guy! Can you picture this?:

And just think of the fun if they outsourced the support center overseas....

please send your
- code
- telefone number
- desired salary

to jobs@diebold.com

Maybe you get a short term contract till 11/02/2004

The "Submit your obfuscated vote-counting code now" link should read:

Submit your obfuscated vote-counting code to the Diebold "Defending our right to count your vote however we damn well please" competition.

that is all

The machines control the matrix now.

All forms of electronic voting should be banned. We've seen what can happen with the diebold machines, and we all know ow easy it is to manipulate data. Count all votes three times by three different groups of people and all discrepencies accounted for. This is our right, a democraticaly voted government. Fuck the costs.

No. There are laws regarding this sort of stuff. In Australia I believe it's the lotteries commision. It will be stipulated by the local lotteries and gaming commission of where the event is actually held. The Questions will be picked totally at random. Of course, as we know, with all of these things, they are totally secure, and not open to any form of malicious tampering

Diebold CEO, Bob Urosevich, announced, "Like our motto says, 'We won't rest!' We will fight this lawsuit until we win! For us, it is do or die bold!"

Going to diebolds election systems page, on the right there's an image of an eagle and headline saying "Every votes counts. Click on the eagle to find out more". As if they were pretending to be contributing to a democracy.

Well, as of 6:30ish pacific time today, that link is a dead end.

J

There's a javascript demo of the Diebold Election System on the Diebold site.

Guess what? In Safari 1.3 at least, it doesn't work.

(Try voting for one candidate on each ballot, then on the next page, you appear to have cast no votes, confirmed by 'review').

Try it here: http://www.diebold.com/dieboldes/OnLine_Demo/scree n1.html

Check out Diebold's page on their election junk. Check out the part that says:

Every Vote counts.
Click on the Eagle to find out more.

Then laugh.

Looks to me like this is a chance to drive a wedge into either Diebolds closed model or Californias acceptance of it.

I wonder where we could find one of those.

ROFLMAO

Why not model these voting machines after ATM's?

You know, I would like to see this pass, I would even like to see the Betamax decision overturned. Why you might ask? Because of the wakeup call it will create.

Yeh, like the wakeup call we got in the 2000 election with Florida. I mean it was bad, but look at the results, now we have high-quality electronic voting machines so now if we get screwed over we won't have to spends weeks counting chads, we'll know the second your votes goes to /dev/null. Or how about that other thing, The Patriot Act. I swear, my town has been in constant riot/protest. Its just amazing how concerned the citizens are freedoms.

sorry, i think you got that wrong

the correct link is here

What do you mean unconnected? These machines run Windows and have network connections.

it's run by a Republican who raised money for Bush and promised in a 2003 fund-raising letter that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president next year".

No, *that* was the Germans:

Charles Diebold, a German immigrant, founded the Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1859.

Evil he may be, but he's not enough of an idiot to show a bias publicly when his company NEEDS him to have the appearance of evenhanded neutrality.

Let's look a little further down on that article on the Diebold website (you really should read it if you don't believe that he's publically partisan):

O'Dell said he will not stop supporting Bush's campaign.

The more I see about Diebold, the more I believe they really are idiots. I don't think they're malicious, just stupid. As you say, you'd have to be an idiot to publically take a partisan stand in an election as the CEO of a voting machine company... and yet, he did. He now realizes it was a mistake.

[TMB]

I'm sure this has been mentioned before, but I don't know where to find original sources for this. Are there reputable sources that quote or describe the diebold ceo saying he would give the election to Bush?

How about on Diebold's own website ? :-) From the article:

In an invitation to a Republican fund-raiser at his suburban Columbus mansion, O'Dell said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president next year."

[TMB]

We need paper receipts. What regard to what have I heard that said before?

Here is the Diebold specificaion PDF for the 520. It says the thing has a P4 in it, and I would assume this is because they designed some sort of software framework for the Optiva to be expandable in the future to do things like sell concert tickets.

Imagine if that CDR drive was usable to load programs onto it. Furthermore, I'm really hoping these things don't have bluetooth in them.

520 Spec PDF

-Steve

It's not exactly surprising that they waste complexity on an ATM when they have this bloated Flash website.

go to the diebold website and you will see a patriotic picture of an eagle. the text "every vote counts. click on the eagle to find out more." reassures us that diebold really cares about preserving our democracy. unfortunately, if you click on the eagle you just end up at an empty page. too bad... i guess diebold really doesnt care about our votes...

go to the diebold website and you will see a patriotic picture of an eagle. the text "every vote counts. click on the eagle to find out more." reassures us that diebold really cares about preserving our democracy. unfortunately, if you click on the eagle you just end up at an empty page. too bad... i guess diebold really doesnt care about our votes...

How do you figure?

Diebold is not a "small company" as you so succintly put it. Quoting their website, "With $3.9 billion in government funding in the pipeline for election reform, Diebold is set to conquer the nation's voting system overhaul." Ironically, this link is under the "rock the vote" PR section of their website.

Cathy Cox (Secretary of State, GA) is an open supporter of Diebold. Furthermore, she's been acused of fraudulent election proceedings in 2000!

She's probably the next Cathy Harris. Cathy Harris was the 2000 Florida Secretary of State. She's the person that STOPPED the recounts and declared "BUSH" the winner. She's also now a US Senator under Bush. Furthermore, she was a Bush Campaign Vice-President a few years prior.

C'mon people? How much writing on the wall does it take?!?

Sure, digital elections are more secure than conventional ones. Well I'm sure that they can be, just as long as you don't use guess whose voting system.

and instead will direct you to diebold.com

"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal" - Diebold employee

Of course, it doesn't make sense to spam those who vote against you...

Ah, but wait until e-Voting really gets going. "If you want to be removed from this mailing list, click here."

It's not what Diebold is pushing, but it is something they offer. Look at their Accuvote OS

The difference between what you are suggesting and it's actual use is that only one is needed per polling location. Not exactly the option Diebold wants. Why sell one when you can sell ten.

FWIW, we have been using these to vote for several years now. If the device can't properly scan the ballot, it spits it out and you have the option of filling out a new one.

There is also no reason why such an important part of our political system can't move forward to newer technologies. When appropriate.

One thing I question is why use touch screen voting? What is wrong with this solution? Votes are cast on a piece of paper, just take a marker and fill in the appropriate bubble. Only one machine is required per location. So you have a fast count, and can always verify the acuracy by counting the paper ballots. And it's cost efficient too.

I think that sounds easier than it is.

http://diebold.com/

If the same things that happened in Florida happen again, nobody will ever know because there is no paper trail anymore, so there won't even be any need to stop the recount.

I personally think that Bush will lose the polls but win the elections...

The same Diebold that has grossly insecure voting machines? The same Diebold that is abusing copyright claims and is being sued by EFF and students.

Well ain't karma a bitch Diebold?

What I am concerned about is whether or not my bank that I use uses Embedded XP for their ATMs. If so then I might have to consider switching banks. Not just because of this but because MS based systems are so notoriously insecure. Yeah yeah mod me down if you must but I'd feel much better having embedded Linux (or some other proven secure system) watching my money thank you.

FYI if you're using Union Federal you might want to start looking around now,... hehe

I don't know.

Diebold, perhaps?

Top amount of votes was only 1690. Pretty good amount, but really I would expect more...

Well, they had to throw out a bunch of votes for this project; no one could figure out how they got there in the first place...

Jay (=

"I don't know what the holdup is," Margaret K. Luca (D), secretary of the county's three-person elections board, said late last night. "I thought we had it covered. We tested all week in the county."

... made by Diebold, it should be noted. They are the AccuVote OS models. This is not indicated in the article summary, however it is the case. I voted in Cambridge last night, and noted with mixed emotions the little Diebold logo as I slid my ballot in, and then the machine rejected it. (It worked on the second try)

Diebold, Incorporated is now safeguarding the foundation of America's history, the Charters of Freedom: the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights

Admittedly, they're talking about the vaults that store the original documents, but the irony is delicious.

Taking it a step further, why are these documents so safe? It's not because we have the originals stored in fire-proof, earthquake-proof vaults. It's because these precious documents have been copied over and over and distributed to every citizen and stored the world over. Even if the originals were destroyed, the content would be preserved. At the time of the Revolution, these documents were copied and widely distributed to insure that even if the originals fell into the hands of the British Army, the content would live on. Let's apply that model to more current situations:

1) The Founding Fathers, recognizing the value of the documents, copyright them. The Constitution, Declaration of Independence, etc cannot be copied, and can only be read publically by permission of Founding Fathers (tm). Clearly, this concept would have been anathema to our forebears, as they recognized that the principals of government must be public and transparent.

2) Diebold's memos were leaked because copies were stored in an insecure manner. This (original) copy has been copied over and over to insure that it can't be destroyed. Although Dielbold is doing everything in it's power to stop the spread of the information, their success is limited. Now that the documents are on the net via ftp, p2p, and http, they can't all be tracked down and destroyed. People with an interest in freedom (wait, let me capitalize that for emphasis) Freedom continue to spread these douments so that their content is not destroyed and forgotten. I see a direct parallel here, and Diebold probably do too. That's the danger.

Here's a wacky thought as an aside. How can we place the documents in public record? There's got to be a way to make them permanantly available. All I can come up with is for someone to print them out, a second person to steal the copies, then report the crime to the police. The documents, now evidence in a criminal trial, would have to be read into the public record. Can anyone come up with a better plan?

It's much more than the lure of the forbidden. These documents don't only expose insecurity of the system and the potential for massive vote fraud; they expose evidence of illegal tampering in one election, and a callous attitude (to be generous) toward the implications of these security flaws for the public interest. Even worse, Diebold's response to the revealed flaws in their system and procedures was not to respond to the issues raised but rather to issue cease-and-desist orders. This is fundamentally about the democratic process, and there are good reasons to mirror these documents. The ultimate irony - and the thing that really makes me want to vomit - is that Diebold is also the company responsible for protecting the original Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence.

It is so nice of you to put up a mirror on your own server.

Cheeeeeers,
Tab Cola

Mirror linked here too. Ironic - and revolting - thing is that Diebold is also the company responsible for protecting the original Constitution, Declaration, and Bill of Rights.

World conquest through deception.

You start out as a lowly president's kid, only endowed with a small oil company and a baseball team.
The object of the game is to use deception and underground systems such as skull and bones to achieve world domination.

Pitfalls could include alcohol addiction, being bad at Political Science, and getting caught lying to your country.

Your objective could be a success however if you just talk to the right people