VoteHere Whistleblower Suit

Whoa, whoa, whoa! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-02 03:58 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

Wrongful Dismissal by mfh · 2004-05-02 03:59 · Score: 5, Interesting

> "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.

--
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.

Use schools as a model? by PurifyYourMind · 2004-05-02 04:00 · Score: 5, Interesting

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? by big+tex · 2004-05-02 04:05 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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I think I need a new sig here.

The new secure voting system by WebMasterJoe · 2004-05-02 04:00 · Score: 5, Funny

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?

--
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.

RTFA! by unborracho · 2004-05-02 04:01 · Score: 5, Informative

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?"

--
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla

Suit settled by aqui · 2004-05-02 04:08 · Score: 5, Informative

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... ;)

--
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."

Re:Whistleblower Laws? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-05-02 04:16 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

Ridiculous lawsuit by a software tester by Fubar411 · 2004-05-02 04:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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