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California AG Says He'll Sue Diebold
moby11 points to this Reuters story carried by Yahooo!; it begins "California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said on Tuesday he would sue electronic voting machine maker Diebold Inc. on charges it defrauded the state with false claims about its products."
So they will sue Diebold, win, and use the money to buy more Diebold products? After all, they are probably engaged in some type of "e-vote upgrade" and have already sold their "old" optical/mechanical/etc. machines to "poorer" [not considering the CA budget deficit] states.
Have they considered vendor lock-in?
"Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has said Diebold deceived California with aggressive marketing that led to the installation of touch-screen voting systems that were not tested or approved nationally or in California."
From the sounds of it, the person(s) involved with authorizing the installation gave in to Diebold's hype without bothering to give system a thourough inspection/review prior to making the decision. In addition to suing Diebold, maybe the AG should be looking for some heads to chop for making a bad situation[company pushing false claims] even worse[installation and failure of product]?
You're assuming that there is a company with a good voting machine package available and the ability to ramp up production quickly. From what I've read, the only reason most states are even looking at these machines are because they're being forced to do so by a stupid, reactionary federal law inspired by the 2000 FL problems. Here in Washington state, our government has been aggressively attacking the voting machine manufacturers because none of them make a good product but we have to buy at least one electronic voting machine per county by either 2006 or 2008 (I forget) or break federal law.
This is a clear case of reactionary legislation mandating solutions worse than the problems.
It'll only be treason after they orchestrate a coup, and even then only if they get caught failing. Until then it's just business :-)
Seriously though, I'm not one of the hysterical anti-Diebold mob, but there are a number of troubling things about this company and these systems. That said there will always be issues with any system and people crying that the sky is falling, but in this case there's enough substance and evasion by Diebold to cause some serious concerns. The case for code auditing and an open software model seems to have a great deal of appeal. I can't help but think we're rushing into this in a compressed timeframe and installing expensive systems early that will leave a technological legacy for future elections and systems to deal with. You'd have hoped that someone with a clue would have sat down and started some reasonable standards process and a software engineering effort to go along with it. OK this has happened to a limited degree but it has been steamrollered by a drive to do this in haste with intense lobbying in some areas, now what was this lawsuit about again?.
more proof of malfeasance(previous diebold owners running away with elections when behind in polls, etc...) :(
Politicians
Halfway down, see ctrl-f rigging
convicted fellons working for them!
i don't have an account
Backdoor vote rigging?
That is a starter list, I'll post more later, just mod the parent up(this one!)
This mind intentionally left blank.
The KKK a bunch of sheetheads? You decide!
You misunderstand...
"Lockyer determined sufficient evidence existed to go forward with a false claims lawsuit against Diebold," the statement said. The state's top lawyer earlier had dropped a criminal investigation of Diebold.
It's an electon year, right? Even if he's not up for re-election, it's the natural behavior of a politician.
To whit:
Diebold Vice President Thomas Swidarski said in a statement that the company was pleased Lockyer dropped the probe. Despite Lockyer's decision to sue, the company is "confident that the state's decision to intervene will aid in a fair and dispassionate examination of the issues raised in the case," Swidarski said.
What Swidarski really oughta said, "[the company] is confident that this is a political ploy and will amount to nothing."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Has anybody tried talking to non-computer people about electronic voting? I've tried it a few times, even toning down things, but people often either don't understand what's at stake or assume I'm exagerrating.
I think this is quite possibly the most important US domestic issue this year, and feel that the word needs to get out about this, so we can try to fix what we can before it's too late. Unfortunately, I haven't been successful thus far. Has anybody else had better luck?
It is interesting how this has played out. /.ers have been moaning (rightly so) about how this stuff is bad and how the ppl in charge have been ignoring it. And now the ppl in charge seem to be waking up. There appears to be hope after all.
Having said that, it should never have happened in the first place.
> we have less of chance of a Bush/Gore fiasco raising its ugly head and saying "I'll be back".
:P
Except it's California. If Kerry doesn't take the state easily, that's a red flag to investigate.
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
It's a weeee bit more complicated than that.
...for a more complete demo.
:(. This crap has to go regardless.
OK.
Everybody is looking at how Diebold "Corporate" in Canton OH (the parent company) is riddled with Bush/GOP links. And that's true.
But it's NOT true of Global Election Systems, the Canadian company that Diebold bought in 2002 and renamed "Diebold Election Systems" (still based in Vancouver BC to this day). Diebold corp of Ohio had been investing slightly before buying them outright but the investments do NOT go all the way back to Oct. of 2000.
Late Oct. 2000, GEMS version 1.17.5 was released. Per Bev Harris, this was the earliest version she could find that had the "double set of books" hack in it apparantly designed for election fraud. See also:
http://www.equalccw.com/deandemo.html
Early Oct. of 2000, Global hired a new head programmer for GEMS: Jeffrey Dean.
During the mid to late '80s, Dean embezzled more than $400,000 from a Seattle law firm he was doing computer consulting for. Dean was convicted in the early '90s of 23 counts of computer-aided accounting fraud in what the court called a "sophisticated scheme".
How did he end up hooked up with Global?
He shared a jail cell with another of the founders during the '90s.
Upshot: Global appears to have been run by a genuine bunch of crooks. *Not* political crooks, just plain ol' crooks. Diebold corporate didn't do enough background checks at the time of the buyout and I doubt they understood what sort of pirates they'd swallowed.
I can't be sure of course, 'cuz maybe the Canton boys DID know what they were getting involved in. But if they didn't, then the whole "Bush/GOP connection thing" that the Diebold Corporate people in Ohio are now famous for was a deeply unfortunate coincidence and God only *knows* what's going to happen in November!
Keeerist.
Think this is unlikely?
The big MONEY in election fraud involves rigging *local* elections, esp. building projects, construction bonds and the like. And people don't pay near the attention to that like they do national races.
I suspect that's what Global was really after. And I suspect keeping a secret all the way up to the Bush White House would be...unmanagable and dangerous as hell.
Am I certain Bush is "clean" (of this, at any rate)? Hell no. I *do* know that a heck of a lot of Democrats in various places have pushed for Diebold (starting with Georgia) and I know that county election officials can use the "cheats" Diebold built in very damned easily. Guys, I've personally seen MS-Access loaded onto GEMS boxes within counties - Fresno County's elections staff let me peek at their systems some months back (but the MS-Access was an older version (97) not compatible with the more recent GEMS databases so any ill with it happened some time ago, not recent).
Anyways. I don't want to end up betting on whether or not Diebold will "win out" in "hacking contests" with county elections officials
Jim March