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

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.

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

[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

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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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!

[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.

A *DRM* voting machine vendor?

[YetAnotherName]

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

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... ;)

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?!?

[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.

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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

suing/wrongful

[stevejsmith]

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

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.

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?

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: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

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?