VoteHere Whistleblower Suit

astar writes "VoteHere is a DRM electronic voting machine vendor. Dan Spillane is sueing them for wrongfull termination in a whistleblowers suit."

Comments

Whistleblower Laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

explain!

Re:Whistleblower Laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

Info here.

Basically, if:
-your employer works for the US government in some capacity
and
-your employer acts to defraud the government somehow
and
-you report the fraud to the government
and
-the company fires you for tattling on them

then

-you can sue them for wrongful termination, based on the fact that you were legally obligated to report their illegal activities to the government.

In some cases, if the government manages to recover the money that was stolen from them, they can give you a percentage of it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa!

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't think the state of Washington was big enough for *two* evil software companies. I'm also stunned that Microsoft hasn't tried to buy them yet.

Re:Whoa, whoa, whoa!

[sumdumass]

haha.. are you kidding? if microsoft was to own the machine that actually cast the votes and then everyone remebers the slap on the wrist for their monopley scandals, the general public would be calling for thier heads on a stick.

serriously, i don't think micorsoft would want to be in a position were they would have to be scrutinized more severly because they controled the technoligy that puts the politicions in place. A judge would be more likley to throw the book at them just to avoid the apearance of having them in thier pockets or being repsonsible for putting them in office. i would think any judge or politicion that would want to be re-elected would have little choice but to be extra harsh on anything microsoft does wrong just to protect thier perosnal integrity.

Re:Whoa, whoa, whoa!

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems this company may actually be more evil than MS (if that is even possible...) from http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

Also, under normal circumstances I would not be posting anonymously, but considering what the writer at blackboxvoting has to say about this issue, it may not be wise to do so... as I don't have my aluminum foil hat, and my computer monitor is watching me right now...

I would put a direct link with the anchor in, but there isn't one on the site, do a search for the title...

[QUOTE]

The Secret Service Wants Your Name: Will "subpeona" this web site?

...

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 shit 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?

I was in the ending stages of writing my book, putting new chapters online every few days, at that time. Like I'm going to hack into VoteHere (those who know me realize that I couldn't hack my way out of a paper bag) -- this was just dumb.

I turned down the software. In early January this year, VoteHere does a press release that it was hacked in October and tries to blame it on the activism community. I published an article expressing doubt that we'd gotten the whole story.

Now, I have been interviewed by the Secret Service on this VoteHere hack story about five times. They never spend much time on the hack. Most of the time is spent on the Diebold memos, which they claim they are not investigating.

Here's the deal: The leaking of memos to journalists is not something the government can come in and demand to investigate very easily...

[/QUOTE]

Wrongful Dismissal

[mfh]

> "I didn't feel that just shutting up was, in my opinion, the American thing to do," he said.

I can totally understand this point of view. I've experienced similar events in my career. But not exactly the same, in that my former employer was just a bully, not distributing defective products.

I'm always surprised when I hear of terminated employees suing their bosses. Most of us don't have the resources to pull off successful termination suits in Canada, because we have to put our lawyers on retainer, and the whole process seems hardly worth the effort.

I was recently terminated by my employer after filing several grievances for harassment, and I looked into a lawsuit. What I found was not impressive at all; it could take years for me to successfully sue my former employer and the onus for proof was on me. There were witnesses to the events, but for obvious reasons, they weren't taking my side, as they were all afraid to lose their jobs. I wore a hat in the office, a company hat, and the boss handed them out only a few days prior to the final straw. When I wore it to work, the boss told me to take it off and I said that I had hat-head, and that I would not wear it the following day, but that I had to wear it that day. FYI, the employer did not tell us never to wear these company hats in the office, prior to the event. The boss caused a huge scene and started swearing at me in front of the whole office, calling me names and carrying on like a total madman. As a result of the disturbance, I had a meeting with HR and we agreed that I would have two-weeks "come as you please" time, where I could work from home or work late at night instead of working regular hours. The boss informed me that this was not acceptable, and he insisted that I be present while some important clients were there. I gave in, not wanting to further confront this boss. Finally, on the last day of the so-called free-time, I informed the HR manager that I would not be present, and that I would be working from home. I was fired by my boss the same day.

So, after being wrongfully dismissed, I looked into suing my employer, and the cost is extremely prohibitive. I may not even win, I was informed, because I broke some office policy by refusing to remove the company hat, even though it was given to me a few days prior, and even though I was told to wear it. The fact that I was insubordinate, or it could be implied that I was insubordinate, is the reason I would have no grounds, or it would be totally hard to prove my case, even though I was verbally abused on several times prior to this event. Even though I was on HR leave, I could still be fired, because I guess the manager somehow trumps HR?

All in all, my case was too complicated to be profitable in court. I would end up losing money or merely breaking even. The fact that I'm a white male in his mid-thirties, also has an impact on the possible success of such a case.

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[Anonymous Coward]

See, he's concerened about voting fraud, and you wore a hat to work and refused to take it off. No sympathy. That's like a huge difference in magnatude of significance.

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[$calar]

Who cares if you have hat head? I think that telling your boss that you won't take the hat off on those reasons alone is not a very good excuse. You should have did what your boss asked. Now, unless you are not disclosing some other kind of trouble you caused, it seems like your boss is a real asshole. However, I really am not very sympathetic to you because you disobeyed orders over something pretty asinine.

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[jabbadabbadoo]

This must be the most interesting First Post ever published. Put it in the hall of fame!

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[persaud]

Yes, I thought my sort order had been changed for some reason.

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[yulek]

was it a white hat or a black hat?

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[kfg]

What I found was not impressive at all; it could take years for me to successfully sue my former employer and the onus for proof was on me.

This is exactly the same as in the US. Of course the onus of proof is on you. You are the accussor, they are the defender. They are innocent until you show otherwise, which is as it should be, however much that might not be working in your favor at the moment.

If it were otherwise we'd all just go around accussing everybody of everything and collecting checks from them.

KFG

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[Lord Kano]

I don't know anything about Canadian law, but in my state (PA) here in the US the rules for termination are convoluted in the extreme.

This is what's known as an "at will" employment state, meaning that either the employer or the employee can terminate employment for any reason or even no reason at any time. But you can't be terminated for your race, sex, religion, or any other such reason. In most cases, employers who would fire you for such a reason, would never hire you in the first place. But even if you're terminated legally, you can still get unemployment compensation if you were not fired for willful misconduct.

My last employer used to do things like selective enforcement of the rules. For example a woman's skirt could be no higher than 4 inches above the knee. But, many women wore skirts that short or shorter on a daily basis. If one of the people who were not in the inner circle did such a thing she'd be sent home. Hats are against the dress code, but that rule is never enforced against women. One day I had to remove a head covering, so I spend the next two weeks loudly pointing out every dress code violation that there was in the office. That got me a reputation as a "trouble maker". I got written up more than any employee there. But every write up was more for my attitude than for my actual actions, so I wasn't teminated.

Once, during training, we were instructed as to what we were supposed to tell our clients when our computer systems were down. The script was "our systems are updating", I stated plainly that I would not lie at anyone's request. My employment was threatened. My response was, do you really want me to let everyone know that I was terminated for refusing to lie to our clients? The details of that lie are immaterial, the damage to the company's reputation would be done if it became a matter of public record that I was terminated because you tried to force me to lie.

Eventually our client reduced the size of our account and I was one of the lucky few to get let go. I got unemployment compensation out of the deal.

I will never compromise my personal code of ethics for the sake of a job. They can take away my employment, but they can't take away my ethics and dignity.

In the end, if you get fired for taking a moral stand, there are many employers who would like to have you on board.

LK

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[glpierce]

Exactly what is your claim to innocence? When has wearing a hat at a professional workplace ever been acceptable? Hats, shirts, etc. sporting a company name/logo have always been targeted at promoting the company or allowing people to show their affiliation outside of work. I have a hat from a law firm. All of the lawyers have both hats and shirts (multiple designs, in fact), but they would never even think of wearing them to the office.

Sounds to me like you did something out of line, refused to correct it, and got upset that your boss did the right thing. It's his job to keep people in line; if you want to break standards and talk back to your boss (saying you have hat-head and won't take off the hat is in effect saying "fuck you, I'll do what I want to"), don't expect to keep your job for long or expect sympathy from others.

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[Phurd Phlegm]

Sounds to me like you did something out of line, refused to correct it, and got upset that your boss did the right thing. It's his job to keep people in line; if you want to break standards and talk back to your boss (saying you have hat-head and won't take off the hat is in effect saying "fuck you, I'll do what I want to"), don't expect to keep your job for long or expect sympathy from others.

I guess if his company gave him a hat and he wears it to work, that seems somehow . . . reasonable. And so far as that goes, I don't see that it's the place of my manager to tell me how to dress. If he or she is wasting time on that, what are they doing about their actual job--which is making sure everyone has the resources they need to do their jobs.

Sounds to me more like the boss was one of those little Hitler types that get some authority and decide they need to use it for something.

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[sosegumu]

One day I had to remove a head covering, so I spend the next two weeks loudly pointing out every dress code violation that there was in the office. That got me a reputation as a 'trouble maker'. I got written up more than any employee there.

While I will admit that you probably had a point that was valid, I can't imagine that you endeared yourself to your coworkers and you probably got the reputation as a 'narc'. In the end, you probably alienated both management and the people with whom you worked.

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[glpierce]

"I don't see that it's the place of my manager to tell me how to dress."

In certain jobs, you must wear a company-issued uniform (McDonalds, Wal-Mart, etc). In other jobs, you must wear a suit or dress (law or business firms). Other jobs allow a conservative-casual dress code (slacks, button-down shirt, etc). You aren't free to dress how you want unless you work from home. Wake up and join society - your boss dictates your appearance (even if they allow you freedom, it's still their call). Professionals dress professionally. Company hats are intended to be worn outside, not inside (unless it's part of a uniform).

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[Lord Kano]

While I will admit that you probably had a point that was valid, I can't imagine that you endeared yourself to your coworkers and you probably got the reputation as a 'narc'.

In all honesty, most of my coworkers agreed with me. Every few days a different person would come up to me during a smoke or lunch break and express quiet approval. I'm sure that the people who got away with breaking the dress code every day didn't like it, but I didn't really care about them.

I took the "long walk" several times. I was lectured by no less than 3 different members of management because of my "attitude problem". I stuck to the line that the only problem I had was with unfair treatment for those of us not in the "clique".

In the end, you probably alienated both management and the people with whom you worked.

Most members of management couldn't stand me. Many if not most of my coworkers were on my side, even though most of them were too afraid to voice their approval in public.

LK

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[Anonymous Coward]

Point taken about it being hard to sue employers, but do you really want it to be easier? If it was easier, then every employee who got fired would sue theire employer for revenge. That would make employers afraid to fire anyone, even the worst employees. That would mean we would all have to put up with bad colleagues because half the company would end up being the bad employees that never got fired, while the good employees would leave for better environments.

Also, your particular situation is a classic case of personality conflict, your boss's personality was an asshole while your personality was to not kiss up to assholes. I've been fired for similar reasons, and I simply thought "good riddance, better go work for someone else than put up with that crap." The only problem with being fired is explaining it to future employers, just say you were let go and use a trusted colleague for reference.

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[tonyr60]

Tinfoil, I suspect...

Re:Wrongful Dismissal

[ToeDruid]

You say you're not very sympathetic to him because he "disobeyed orders"??? Is this guy in the military? Unless there is a clear cut dress code or policy, a manager telling me to take of my hat without a VERY good reason (i.e. the hat interferes with me doing my job) they can go spit!

We had teachers like that in high school...where there was a dress code, but even then there are lines that are not crossed, and verbal abuse would be one of them. Allow me to digress a little...I had a gym teacher who made a habit of phsically hitting the hats off peoples heads from behind without any warning or request to remove it. After graduation I purposely wore a hat when visiting the school on official business. When the inevitable happened I reacted by grabbing the teacher and threw him on the floor (I've been a practicing ju-jitsu student for about 15 years). I further threatened to press charges for assault. From what I hear he actually received an official reprimand from the school...hehehe

Anyway...my point is that this was not "asinine", especially if this guy thought the boss was doing it out of spite in an attempt to create an atmosphere of hostility and intimidation. I encourage him to press ahead and seek legal counsel to determine his possibilities of success. This process takes time and money from the employer as well and they often settle before it reaches court because it's cheaper for them to do so.

Use schools as a model?

[PurifyYourMind]

Maybe all of these people who want to shove electronic voting on us should consider that something very similar to an automated paper voting system--Scantron sheets and readers--works pretty well in the enormous educational system. It has proven its ability to scale and be relatively free of cheating, at least at the schools I attended. :-)

Re:Use schools as a model?

[big tex]

They have that.
I went to college in Mass., and they have a glorified scantron machine.

You get you paper ballot and a #2 pencil, and go into the booth. When you come out, they scan it. If it registers any errors, it spits back out, and you get to re-do. If it is correct, it sucks the ballot into the box and records the data electronically.

Assuming there is some good way of making all of these ballot boxes talk to a central computer, it sounds like the best answer to me.

Re:Use schools as a model?

[PurifyYourMind]

Assuming there is some good way of making all of these ballot boxes talk to a central computer, it sounds like the best answer to me. Scantron machines already have a statistics function, from what I've heard (I've never been able to actually fool with one, being a mere student.) Just add up the totals from each machine and you've got your winners. The beauty of the Scantron tactic is that human beings can recount by hand if necessary, something which doesn't apply to Diebold/etc.

Re:Use schools as a model?

[tsg]

Scantron readers and the like are generally designed around preventing the person filling out the form from cheating. There is little incentive for the person grading the test to want to cheat, nor the company making them to want to fudge the grades. The student usually gets his test paper back and can complain if the scanner marked it incorrectly. None of this is true for voting. The scanners can be rigged and there is no way to check that they are right except my a manual recount.

This is not to say that it can't work with the right procedures and protocols, but the suitability of scanners for grading papers, where only one person has a vested interest in the outcome and is able to double check it, doesn't necessarily make them suitable for voting.

Re:Use schools as a model?

[BandwidthHog]

We use Scantrons here in NC, and we feed the ballot into it face down.

Sure, we're bass ackwards in almost every other conceivable way, but according to the laws of averages, we had to get *something* right.

Re:Use schools as a model?

[johnlcallaway]

From what I have heard, there are two issues with the optical scanner method:

• The forms tend to have lots of misreads due to stray marks on the paper. Not a big deal, go get another one and do it again. In Maine, you were allowed to request up to three do-overs, at which point it was at the descretion of the poll workers whether or no you got another form
• Kinda hard to use if you are blind....

My personal opinon is I loved them. They were anonymous after the votes were cast, read electronically so that the initial counts were quick, but could be read manually to verify election counts.

Re:Use schools as a model?

[PurifyYourMind]

The forms tend to have lots of misreads due to stray marks on the paper.

How about a "stencils" approach? That is, have two sheets of paper. The first is the actual paper upon which marks are placed and which is read by the optical device. The second is an overlay sheet with holes in it, where the "bubbles" appear, so that any stray marks will simply not be recorded physically. This could be transparent to the user--the machine could strip off the overlay sheet as part of the process of reading the ballot.

Re:Use schools as a model?

[hellswraith]

What about ATM's? Everyone uses thes systems daily. The banking software is very mature in this respect. If the government was pretty smart, they could force ATM's to be voting machines as well. You enter your card and pin (issued by the government) and follow the on screen voting. You get a receipt saying who you voted for.

This makes voting easier to the masses. Since we all trust these ATM machines now with our most precious possesion (money), we could certainly trust them with a vote.

Just a thought of mine.

Re:Use schools as a model?

[WalksOnDirt]

The security issues with voting and ATMs are of a somewhat different type.

In particular, we probably do not want people to be able to prove who they voted for. This could lead to vote buying, or women retaliating against their husbands for voting the wrong way. Or vice versa.

Re:Use schools as a model?

[juan2074]

We have been using that system to vote here in Seattle for the past several years.

Before that (in the early 1990s), we used a pen to punch out the holes in our ballots. What fun!

The new secure voting system

[WebMasterJoe]

Personally I think this and many other problems would go away if the voting system was ported to slashcode. And every voter was given five moderator points to spend on the candidates.

The one with the highest score wins. And we'd be able to use our mod points to explain why we're voting for or against somebody. This candidate's funny. This one's informative. That one's insightful. This one loser is a troll, and that guy's whole campaign is just flamebait.

Wouldn't that be more fun?

Re:The new secure voting system

[endx7]

Do we get to metamod too?

Re:The new secure voting system

[BandwidthHog]

And the art of politicking is not too far removed from the art of karma whoring, so candidate retraining costs should be kept to a minimum.

RTFA!

[unborracho]

Not even the poster can RTFA... they make DRE machines (Digital Recording Electronic).. not DRM. When I first looked at the article post, I thought: "oh great, now the MPAA/RIAA has sway in voting machines too?"

Re:RTFA!

[kunudo]

They just said DRM to build up a sufficient level of antipathy against VoteHere.

Re:RTFA!

[yomegaman]

Not only that, I also heard that they use the DMCA to require you to buy a $699 SCO license in order to vote. You take that license to the polling place, where you then fill our a free registration form in order to get a proprietary RFID chip that will open the booth door and that will also be used to track your votes. The bastards!

Did I miss anything?

Article.

[Raven42rac]

The article is from February 27, 2003. Which is an eternity on the internet. From what I did read, it looks like a normal whistleblower suit, only with the cliche "e" thrown in front of it.

Re:Article.

[WebMasterJoe]

Good call. Slash team, you may want to update the headline to reflect the age of the story, lest we think it's "news".

Re:Article.

[SpaceLifeForm]

Old crap, different day. Apparently the pressure is on to not cover real news like the fact the SCO royally screwed up with Daimler-Chrysler (DCC has not used the software is question for 7 years) or that SCO is no longer saying GPL is unconstitutional.

Re:Article.

[JohnFluxx]

that SCO is no longer saying the GPL in unconstitional _was_ mentioned in a previous SCO article. I'm too lazy to look it up though for you.

A *DRM* voting machine vendor?

[YetAnotherName]

I suppose that yes, all voting machine manufacturers are dealing in the management of rights, digitally.

Re:A *DRM* voting machine vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we can all agree that DRM is a typo. It should read DRE as stated in annother post..Can someone change this?

Difference

[mfh]

See, he's concerened about voting fraud, and you wore a hat to work and refused to take it off.

I totally agree. The reason I posted this was because I wanted to illustrate how difficult it can be to sue a former employer in Canada. The details are pretty irrelevant because most companies can dance around them. I'm quite pleased this fellow is trying to shine a light on voter fraud, but I wanted to emphasize how much he's risking doing so. It ain't easy!

Suit settled

[aqui]

This suit has to my knowledge already been settled.

Looks like VoteHere doesn't want more bad PR.
A quote from an article at the seatle times:

"We have resolved the matter to our mutual satisfaction and have agreed that we are in pursuit of many of the same goals for election reform," Spillane's attorney, Stan Lippmann, said.

Fired engineer reaches deal with election-software company:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/20 01795328_voting19m.html

30 seconds on Google and Voila... ;)

Re:Suit settled

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoth your linked-to article: Sunlight kills all bacteria.

Words of understanding, my friends. Words of understanding. After all, we all know how much faster bacteria spread in the absense of heat.

Re:Suit settled

[Anonymous Coward]

The lawyer, Stan Lippmann, is an "interesting" character as well. Lots of efforts, all in vain, to get elected in Seattle, as well as some trenchant comments on life, the universe and...vaccination.

http://www.cityofseattle.net/ethics/el99a/report /v pp/lipsta.htm
(cityofseattle.net)

Ahem.

What the fuck?!?

[stubear]

I think it's obvious the poster added the DRM bit to be inflammatory but why does /. insist on using these submissions? Nowhere in the article does it mention or refer to DRM yet there it is, like the ugly weed sitting in the crack of the sidewalk for all to see. Not even the VoteHere website mentions DRM in their products decriptions.

After checking the VoteHere website I also discovered some discrpencies between what Dan Spillane is claiming in his suit and the products VoteHere is offering. According to the company their voting system called VHTi includes a verifiable paper trail. Their other product called RemoteVote was a bit sketchier about the audit trail but considering you can use means of voting that make printingvery difficult or impossible (cell phones, PDAs, etc.) this is not surprising. Perhaps Dan Spillane was simply an annoying prick that tried to make a mountain out of a molehill and got fired for it.

Re:What the fuck?!?

[LostCluster]

DRM in Slashdot's definiton includes any system that applies encryption or security to data that we think should have been stored in plaintext all along. Sure, that's not the proper definition of the term, but it's how it's used around here...

Re:What the fuck?!?

[Cylix]

I guess you didn't read the court complaint list.

On many accounts, a software engineer said, we are not in compliance... we should fix this.

All the while, management ignores the issue and tells the compliance folks they are in the clear.

Among other things, sounds like they directly foobarred him for not pushing the product through.

In a situation like this, where you are a code author for a criticl piece of software, do you really want to risk being brought up to discuss why things failed later... in a court of law.

Sounds like he did the best he could to cover his ass over a product that was being pushed through the door to meet a deadline.

Provided his complaints are well documented it should be an easy win for him and a nice exposure for some crap software.

Re:What the fuck?!?

[stubear]

You're assuming that Dan Spillane's court complaint is truthful and contains no spin. I once got out of a speeding ticket by telling the judge my speedometer didn't say I was going as fast as the cop claimed; I failed to mention that my speedometer wasn't working. Did I lie? Nope. Did I tell the whole truth? I only told the court enough to make myself appear innocent. How do you know Dan Spillane is telling the court "his speedometer isn't working", so to speak?

Re:What the fuck?!?

[Cylix]

You managed to luck out then.

A friend of mine actually had a non-working speedometer, but the judge required a mechanic to issue a small piece of paper detailing the speedometer was in fact defunct. In this case, a speeding ticket is a very minor infraction of the law and a judge taking someones word is going to happen at some point. Exactly what was the cited evidence that you had been speeding?

You could have also asked for the last test results of the officers equipment. Rarely are these things ran through the tests to ensure proper calibration and the ticket can be thrown out with that manner as well. Sure, it probably is working, but there are many ways to work within the system. Pointing out the system is flawed, which is a fairly common notion, doesn't make his claim any less worth looking into.

Of course it contains spin, but its hard to assumme it is all fluff when they continually site points over and over. At some point, if they expect to win, they will have to back their claims. In a situation like this there will or will not be documentation.

However, siting that many sources, I would suspect there is some valid claims there.

I suspect the guy was a bit of an ass, but so am I and I can still get the job done. Also, from experience, I know being an ass does not mean I can't do quality work and make sure everyone else gets their job done too.

In any event, until evidence is presented from both sides there is little point to argue. For the safety of slashdot, let us simply assumme my view is correct.

Also note, if you want to get out of speeding tickets, try calling the station and find out the officers day off. Then, have your court date set for that particular day. If you are lucky, he won't come in on his day off to sit in court.

Re:What the fuck?!?

[stubear]

Actually I really got out of the ticket because the cop put the wrong information on the ticket. He identified my vehicle as a blue Ford F-150 when it was in actuality a blue Chevy S-10. I told the judge, given the weather conditions (dark and rainy night), I felt the cop saw a Ford F-150 speeding but pulled me over by mistake as it was impossible that I was speeding because my speedometer didn't say I was going as fast as the cop claimed. The cop had no evidence other than an improperly filled out ticket so the judge tossed it out. All the cop had to do was look down and left to see the little badge that says S-10.

Always check your ticket for inaccuracies. I learned this from a friend who was identified as being an American Indian simply because he had long black hair and darker olive skin; his last name was Rodella and he's obviously of italian decent. He got out of the ticket because he was improperly identified.

As for Dan Spillane, you forget he only worked there 6 months and if you're a pain in the ass from the get go, chances are you're not going to be there very long. His version of the events are just that, his version of the events and they are likely going through a filtering process much like my speedometer story did. Only tell the court enough to get by, never offer information that could come back to haunt you. Did Dan Spillane offer performance reports or evaluations? Perhaps he just sucked at his job and going over his bosses head straight to the GAO was the straw that broke the camel's back. Even Wired leaves out key information like this and paints the story as one would expect assuming the typical reader of Wired online is like that of Slashdot.

Security

[mfh]

> When you come out, they scan it. If it registers any errors, it spits back out, and you get to re-do. If it is correct, it sucks the ballot into the box and records the data electronically.

The security problem is that people will see your ballot and match it to your face. If it spits out a ballot that's got errors, they can see who *you* voted for. That's the problem. They need a system that will protect your identity. And you can't trust someone, just anyone, to use a system they are unfamiliar with.

Maybe ABM/ATM machines could be used for voting?

Re:Security

[tzanger]

So you have the machine suck it in/spit it out face down and hold the paper by the last 1" or so so you have to pull it out (to prevent it from falling on the floor) -- I fail to see the issue...

Re:Security

[karnal]

Or it sucks it in, and BZZZT shreds the ballot, requesting a re-do.

Re:Security

[big tex]

You know, it's been a while since I used it.

I seem to remember that there was some sort of cover with the key; that way your ballot just has a lot of bubbles on it.
Same sort of security as the 'use my blood' sticker when you donate blood - if the person can read the bar code, they can tell, but otherwise it's secure.

Re:Security

[/dev/trash]

How so? You assume the error page printed out has who you voted for. For all we know all it displays is "ERROR, TRY AGAIN!"

Re:Security

[Jo_2521]

Additionally, you very well have the democratic right to vote incorrect if you want to do so.

To vote incorrectly means that you don't agree with the politics of any of the available candidates, opposed to staying at home which only means you don't care.

Re:Security

[big tex]

Incorrectly, as in voting for two presidential candidates.
More likely where it is city commissioners, and you get a pick 5 from 15 situation.

I agree that you have the right to have a 0 vote counted.

Re:Security

[Chester K]

The security problem is that people will see your ballot and match it to your face. If it spits out a ballot that's got errors, they can see who *you* voted for. That's the problem.

I don't see any reason that last step of the process (scanning and verifying your ballot) needs to be public. Go into a voting booth, fill out the scantron form, stick it into the machine in the booth, verify the results on the screen, and if they're correct, the machine keeps your ballot, otherwise it gives it back to you.

Sounds like an even better solution than having a touchscreen voting machine print off a receipt to stick into a ballot box outside the booth, since this way you're certain that every vote the machine counted is in the physical ballot box.

Re:Security

[big tex]

No, no receipt should be kept correlating specific, identifiable voters and their votes. That leads to the situation where companies could 'encourage' employees to vote in a specific way.
The two choices are verification of the details by the voter only, or a general error kind of output.

Re:Security

[Chester K]

No, no receipt should be kept correlating specific, identifiable voters and their votes. That leads to the situation where companies could 'encourage' employees to vote in a specific way.

That's exactly what I said. :). Most pencil-and-paper voting techniques today involve going into a booth, marking your votes, sealing your ballot, then coming out of the booth to drop it into a ballot box. The suggestions for a paper trail with touchscreen voting have been related -- make your votes on the screen, get a printed form to go drop into the ballot box.

Swapping it around a little bit would make it better -- fill out your ballot manually, and use the scanner in the booth to check that your votes were read correctly. The scanner in the booth would keep your ballot, so that you couldn't "forget" to drop it in the ballot box on the way out.

Re:Security

[DavidTC]

Or combine the ideas, and have a completely seperate machine print a human-readable ballot out, which you then look over and stick in the 'vote' slot if you like it, and the 'discard' slot if you don't.

This gives you at least three totals.

Re:Security

[Jo_2521]

Ah, I didn't know that tidbit about voting in the US .

I'm from Germany and there the situation is different: You're able to vote incorrect at any election.

Not that I do. :)

Re:Security

[laird]

The system I've seen didn't print out an error -- it lit a light warning that the ballot was an overvote (meaning you voted for multiple candidates, which invalidates the vote) or an undervote (meaning you voted for no candidates, which is a common mistake, though is sometimes intentional so it's not a rejection, just a warning).

This immediate feedback that allows voters to correct errors is why these systems have a much lower error rate than the systems that collect ballots and batch scan them after the polls close.

Re:sueing?

[dfn5]

Isn't that the particible form of the sound a pig makes?

What are they referring to?

[BandwidthHog]

There are a few bits in the complaint itself where the lawyermonkeys make some vague reference to things that sound like they could be really dastardly deeds, the kind of things best revealed only in open court (well, at least on the lawyerly TV shows).

"Data path defects hindered the software's ability to correctly transmit the vote from the screen to the system."

"Spillane, Herzong and other quality engineers complained that parts of the voting system were not being documented"

"One such defect, a design problem, left the software unable to properly track certain "events," which in turn threatened the loss of votes, and endangered efficient and timely operation of the polls."

Disturbing at best.

Trick

[mfh]

I think it was a trick. You see they told us to wear the hats and then the guy told me to take it off. I'm pretty sure if there was a uniform, I would have a case, but it's pretty obscured. I was not really given the chance to remove the hat, and I would have but I was being screamed at, at the time. I was standing there dumbfounded! Ack, what a mess that was.

> Now, unless you are not disclosing some other kind of trouble you caused, it seems like your boss is a real asshole.

I think you got this one correct. I was a model employee who always solved the computer problems as the surfaced, quickly. The management just didn't respect computer people at all. We were all labled as such and generally mistreated.

Re:Trick

[mabhatter654]

It's a management style straight out of the 1920's. Basically they start off yelling so that you can't make any suggestions of a "reasonable" comeback to them. The last company I was at had 3 of the 6 managers & the company owner that did much the same thing. They'd walk up to random people and say totally out of line stuff...stuff you couldn't even respond to even if it was totally wrong. But I suppose that it makes everybody "insubordinate" because eventually everybody will stop caring about their jobs and mouth off back and justifies their asshole behavior...

Actually, in your case the HR department covered the companiy's butt pretty well. By adding the cool down time, they could at least claim they "made an effort" and that you "just didn't work out" rather than being shouted out of the office.

Wrongfull Termination

[Anonymous Coward]

The extra 'L' is for 'litigious.'

Re:Wrongfull

[stevejsmith]

German influence creeps? English is primarily a Germanic language. There's no creeping to be done...it's been in there for a thousand years.

Where will the DRM madness stop!

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't these guys heard of fair use? In Chicago we've found no harm in a little innocent vote sharing.

suing/wrongful

[stevejsmith]

1. suing, not sueing
2. wrongful, not wrongfull

Ridiculous lawsuit by a software tester

[Fubar411]

He was there less than six months, and he filed over 250 error reports, often citing them as being priority one. Now anyone who has worked closely with testers know that the good ones are like gold and the bad ones can only bog down the system. And how much loyalty does a company have to a six month employee anyway? Especially one that comes in doing things in his way (citing standards, but those can always be interpreted in many ways) Last time I checked, we were employment at will, and if he wanted to be considered a "whistleblower", he would have done it 1.5 years ago and to a goverment or news agency. A little on my background.. I've been with my current employer just over six months after getting laid off for the second time after college. A lot of that time was learning how their systems work and improving those I understood. I've seen people come and go in that brief time that thought they knew it all and that they were going to shake things up. Problem is, they didn't want to work with people, they wanted to do things their way, other peoples opinions be damned. Andto some extent it is unfortunate that this guy was able to get a settlement from the company. I bet they, and others aware of the lawsuit, are going to think twice before hiring someone who is legitimately energetic and wants to improve the system.

Re:Ridiculous lawsuit by a software tester

[BandwidthHog]

According to the PDF, it was quality assurance manager, Ed Herzog, who was modding up his error reports to +5, Critical. Of course, I don't know how the software testing world works for real, would that be his manager's actual opinion, a rubber stamp based on Spillane's description of them, or a combination of the two?

Re:Wrongfull

[Anonymous Coward]

Germanic influence is not the same as german influence. The normans were not germans.

It's good to know

[Oriumpor]

Reading the documents looks a bit like the average engineer under the gun. Release report regarding volitility of software, and numerous bugs in need of resolution, management goes "Oh those aren't THAAT bad" rather than fix them, they wanna keep to the release schedule on budget.

Re:OT: MODS, PARENT IS TROLL!

[pigscanfly.ca]

Where is the spyware?
I think it is you that are the troll.
Although with that being said I'm using a real browser (mozilla) so if their is spyware I'm probably not seeing it. I didnt put any one my self so if you can point it out to me I would like to get rid of it.

Cool

[mfh]

> In the end, if you get fired for taking a moral stand, there are many employers who would like to have you on board.

Send them my way. I need a career kickstart.

> In most cases, employers who would fire you for such a reason, would never hire you in the first place.

SO true. Many of these kinds of infractions go unreported because it's quite difficult to prove discrimination in the hiring process. Anything short of a 20/20 expose piece likely won't work, or will work only a small percentage of the time.

Forcing someone to lie is common practice in most companies. They may call it "marketing" but I call it collective creativity. Updating our systems... that's a good one. Most systems are updated in parallel, so updates should not cause down-time.

> They can take away my employment, but they can't take away my ethics and dignity.

Having been to many corporate functions, I would have to point out that it's the secret mission of many managers to rob you of all ethics and dignity in the hopes that it will make you a better "team player". God I love Dilbert!!! :-)

Re:Cool

[Lord Kano]

SO true. Many of these kinds of infractions go unreported because it's quite difficult to prove discrimination in the hiring process. Anything short of a 20/20 expose piece likely won't work, or will work only a small percentage of the time.

Jet magazine once reported a story about researchers who sent out a group of identical resumes and gauged the responses from potential employers. They found (not surprisingly) that people who had "black sounding" names were less likely to get responses from a potential employer.

For example "Emily Blake" is nearly twice as likely to get a response to a faxed in resume as "Latisha Johnson" even if everything on their resumes except for the name is the same. I don't believe that they reported the names of any of the companies in question, but it would be nice to hear their corporate officers try to explain it.

Forcing someone to lie is common practice in most companies. They may call it "marketing" but I call it collective creativity.

Also they refused to put it in writing that it was a part of my job description was to provide customers with incorrect information. I knew that they wouldn't, that's why I took such a stand against lying.

Updating our systems... that's a good one. Most systems are updated in parallel, so updates should not cause down-time.

They funniest part is that ALL of our customers knew what was going on anyway. Agents who were willing to lie reported that customers would usually respond with "Oh, your systems are down again. OK. I'll call back tomorrow."

I would just say that I can't access the information that they're requesting at this time. Clients would ask if our systems were down my response was "I can't say that."

LK

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

For example "Emily Blake" is nearly twice as likely to get a response to a faxed in resume as "Latisha Johnson" even if everything on their resumes except for the name is the same.

But everything else is NOT the same. You have people looking at resumes, not robots. Depending on the person, their workload, experience, mood, time of day, current demand for skills, etc, the resumes will be looked at and evaluated differently. What if the HR person, just before looking at Emily Blake's resume, casually talks to some manager or director over coffee or lunch who drops a hint that a certain kind of skill would be required urgently, and it would be nice to have those kinds of people around? Anyhow, you can come up with a bazillion scenarios as to why something like that would happen. I don't doubt that some people would be biased against non-white sounding names, especially in the US where segregation seems to still exist in all but the name, but even there I would say 'twice as likely' is blowing it was out of proportion.

Re:Cool

[Lord Kano]

But everything else is NOT the same.

The scenerio reported in the magazine made everything else the same. They took the exact same resumes and put different names on them. Same skill set, same education, same work history, (all fabricated BTW) and the names that were "black sounding" got a little over half of the responses that the others got.

Anyhow, you can come up with a bazillion scenarios as to why something like that would happen.

The same resume with the name "Jamal Johnson" would tend to get lower responses than if it had "James Johnson" on it.

but even there I would say 'twice as likely' is blowing it was out of proportion.

If memory serves it ended up being 5 to 8. Not quite twice as likely, but almost.

LK

Re:Wrongfull

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Scary isn't it. What will be next? French influences? Who knows what they would call pork or a chair then.

Re:SPECIFICALLY, THE LINKS ARE NOT REAL MIRRORS

[pigscanfly.ca]

I'll admit the first link is a tad bit OT , but the other to are taken directly from the story!
Either there is some massive conspiracy sending me false slashdot headlines, or you have been takeing a bit to much in the way of drugs....
You are the troll....
Now I shall *shake my fist* and hope you go back to your hole.

Bad summary

[billybob]

I read slashdot everyday, maybe I missed the day where we already talked about VoteHere and Dan Spillane??? Seriously though, it's not like thid is Diebold. Give some background on who the hell these people are. Editors should not be approving stories like this for the front page, unless they edit them (hence the term editors) to give a bit more background. :P

Re:Bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

More frightening, I think, is the presence of two misspelled words (wrongfull,sueing), and one factual error (DRM???) in a nineteen-word submission!

Voted off the Island?

[Tablizer]

When he was voted out of the company, did they use e-voting?

In any job - make sure you are ready to hit first

[Anonymous Coward]

Always make sure you have 'something on' your employer. I do, because I recognise that employer-employee is such an intrinsicly unfair relationship the first thing I look for is a little leverage... is the boss having an affair? Look for any illegal practices, unsafe equiptment.... you get the picture.

For coders its even better - after not getting paid on a few contracts before I always install a hidden code in commercial code I write, if I don't get paid and remove the trigger it will fuck the system bigtime a few months later.

All part of the course in this increasingly dog eat dog world :(

Re:Wrongfull

[stevejsmith]

Double ls on the end of words was also a Germanic/Norman fixture of language.

Re:Wrongfull

[Anonymous Coward]

Its kind of alarming how german influence creeps into english language. See also: insightfull, usefull.

It's offtopic anyway, but it's also wrong. English spellings with -full instead of -ful are almost certainly influenced by the English word 'full', not by any German word. The German word forming morpheme -voll has a much narrower scope than English -ful, most English adjectives ending with -ful (e.g. wrongful, useful) don't have an equivalent with -voll in German.

BlackBoxVoting activist doesn't trust VoteHere

[veranikon]

Echoing a previous response, I'm also surprised this lawsuit over a termination in 2001 is somehow considered recent news.

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?

Re:Wrongfull

[kraut]

Actually, it's been there for far longer than that. The French are the relative newcomers to English, with the Norman invasion....

Re:SPECIFICALLY, THE LINKS ARE NOT REAL MIRRORS

[InfiniteWisdom]

I'm sorry... I was just having a bit of fun there. I wanted to see if moderators blindly moded my post about modding blindly too :)

I was half-expecting my post to be modded +5 informative :)

Do Some Research on VoteHere first

[Anonymous Coward]

This posting could make the list of least researched Slashdot articles ever.

VoteHere publishes its protocols and its source code (it's not open source, but the source is available for purposes of reviews, publications, etc... at will.) VoteHere's approach includes a voter-verifiable printout that's even better than what the general VVPAT folks are pitching: you can take the receipt home and you can check online to make sure your vote was counted (and yet you still can't sell your vote because they have a really neat crypto approach where only you know how to verify your vote).

In the world of voting companies, VoteHere is at least *trying* to do the right thing where many others don't get it at all. One guys is complaining, but the claims are pretty vague. Give the company a *little bit* of credit and do your research before you complain about "the man" and "some evil company in Seattle."

Do they have whistles in India ?

[Guy_Warwick]

Could this be another reason why bosses want to outsource US based software employees ?

Backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

I am against this whole "printing" thing.
The cast vote should be manaully manipulated, then scanned.
How is one to know if the printed copy actually reflects the cast vote?
Yes, people will screw it up, but I'd rather have people screw it up than machines.

Management

[mfh]

> In the end, you probably alienated both management and the people with whom you worked.

Unevenly applied management causes this kind of office atmosphere. It's a rookie move for a manager to apply rules to some and not others. If you are a manager and you feel like only applying rules to part of your staff, you have to drop any rule that would have to be applied in this manner.

Only rules that apply to everyone are valid.

Re:Management

[sosegumu]

Unevenly applied management causes this kind of office atmosphere. It's a rookie move for a manager to apply rules to some and not others. If you are a manager and you feel like only applying rules to part of your staff, you have to drop any rule that would have to be applied in this manner.

While I agree with what I believe to be your fundamental point--that management should always *strive* to be fair--management, when done really well, is an art that defies having an algorithm put to it.

Certainly I'm not referring to your statement, which seems completely reasonable, but I have noticed that many /.ers seem to exhibit a condescending anti-management attitude that implies that it's *so* easy to manage a business and if they were just consulted, we would have a workplace utopia. They generally look down on their bosses as being less intelligent, ignoring the possibility that exceptional managers might not have to be smart in the same way that programmers or IT folks do--that they might need less pure reasoning ability and more intuition.

Applying the rules evenly is a great goal to have, but unfortunately, it cannot always be done. The reason for this is that some employees, like some managers, refuse to 'play fair,' and continually use the rules to stir up trouble. I honestly can't say why; maybe they just don't like other people telling them what to do. You can often hear these employees spouting the 'if I were in charge, things would be different' bellyache characteristic of the chronic malcontent.

These people are a cancer and will wreck employee morale if left unchecked. They follow the letter of the law while working feverishly to undermine the spirit of these same rules. Usually they are rather bright folks and there is no real way to stop them unless you're willing to deviate from total impartiality.

I wonder how many of us would allow our own business, that we built up by the sweat of our brow, to be damaged or ruined by someone with authority issues. Personally, if it were me, I would get rid of that person, no matter what it took.

Re:Wrongfull

[stevejsmith]

English well, Old English, which is not at all discernable as English is only about 1000 years old, in the first place.

Stan Lippmann

[juan2074]

I have voted against Stan Lippmann many times.

Go, go, go!

[Doc Ruby]

1> Nothing gets Americans to call for anyone's head on a stick. Except for bin Laden, and where's his headsicle?

2> While M$ always prefers to avoid scrutiny, they also prefer control even at that price.

3> Judges no longer care about the "appearance of impropriety": see the Scalia/Cheney club for gory details.

4> In this scenario Judges get reelected thru M$ machines - QED.

Re:Go, go, go!

[sumdumass]

well, you do have a point.