CNN Reports on Diebold

An Anonymous Reader writes "CNN has finally picked up the story about concerns about Diebold voting machines. It's about time this made it into the mainstream media." If you're interested, here are a couple of related stories.

Comments

Diebold and Civil Disobedience

[cft]

Civil Disobedience is a great example of how democracy should work.

A law made by "the people" is made to represent the best interest of "the people" in general. It should be fair and in proportion, and that should be the basis for obedience to that law. Making theft illegal is in everone's best interests, because it should protect your posessions.

When a law is out of proportion, unjust, or in any other case plain wrong, it is no longer in the best interest of the people in general, and thus should be void. "The people" ignore (break) the law, because they in general do not agree with it.

The ability for the public to act this way should prevent government agents from making laws for their own benefit (corruption). The public has a means of protecting their public interest.

If the voting system is corrupted, it's in the publics best interest to expose this. I'm not aware of who leaked the memos in the first place, but linking to material available on the web should not be punished IMHO.

I think it's utterly wrong to place responsibility of the counting of votes in the hands of a commercial enterprise, not if they don't give full and in-depth insight in the process, and allow auditing at every level at any time. Not because I'm an open source zealot or "liberal", but because I trust a commercial enterprise as far as I can throw them, and that's not very far...

machines

[Anonymous Coward]

Machines will never be appropriate for something this simple - and I say that in a cost effective paradigm.

The only way to be sure that a machine isn't fucking up or being abused is to print an audit trail..... which would use paper so any cost effectiveness goes out the window. Not even counting the cost of expensive machines etc.

The other reason to oppose this is to stop voting from moving anywhere outside of the polling booth (which is where the logic of electronic voting leads) -- because that will just lead to massive fraud, hacking, vote buying, and husbands standing over their wives and children during voting time to make sure they vote for "the party" (which shall remain unnamed).

it doesn't stand up;
technologically (security).
economically (it's madness)
or democratically (it has sinister implications, vulnerabilities and adds nothing other than a contempt for the average voters understanding of how ballots work)

So, from a gnu/linux and general tech lover, fuck off technology we don't need you here.

Lack of Detail

[netsharc]

Too bad they don't mention how lacking Diebold's security is, e.g. how easy it is to open Diebold's Access DB and add users/passwords, to change vote results. I remember reading somewhere, if the machine is in "election mode" and you insert a blank memory card, the machine asks you if you want to format and create an admin card out of it, and does so when you click/touch "yes".

This paragraph annoys me the most though,

David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold Election Systems Inc., one of the larger voting machine makers, said "the fact of the matter is, there's empirical data to show that not only is electronic voting secure and accurate, but voters embrace it and enjoy the experience of voting that way."

They embrace it huh? They enjoyed the experience? What empirical data, the one he pulled out of his ass? That's something he'd probably enjoy. Interesting how CNN headlines the last section with "Critics Mistaken"