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Diebold to Pay $2.6M Due to Insecure Voting Machines
sunilk writes "In a short period, Diebold has been at the center of several problems. Now it seeks to settle the lawsuit filed against it by the State of California by paying $2.6 million. Settlement comes because of flaws in the Diebold systems that could compromise election results."
... that will just set the price of an election!
How the hell can you put a price on jeopardising one of our constitutional rights? These people broke the law in a big way and lied about it, and they're getting off with this slap on the wrist? People should be put in jail for this.
Disgusting.
How much is a secure, honest, fair election worth? 2.6 million? Thats a drop in the bucket.
Something to the effect of the vendors machines being overhauled at the expense of the vendor or removed permanently in the state seems a bit more fitting for this degree of failure.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Now it seeks to settle the lawsuit filed against it by the State of California by paying $2.6 million.
IMHO, this is California's fault for going with Diebold's systems despite being told well and truly before the elections that these voting machines were insecure. Why do they believe the critics now?
Anyways, I'll bet they still use electronic voting machines come next election.
When the San Diego Registrar of Voters implemented the Diebold system, they went ahead and got rid of thousands of these little plastic voting booths we used to use. Also, the stylus voting equipment is gone -- all replaced by shiny new touchscreen voting equipment.
Come election day, half of the machines booted into Windows CE Explorer instead of the voting software... whoops
So now, the hardware is being re-certified, the old voting equipment is gone, and San Diego is using (Diebold Manufactured) optical scanners for voting on a temporary basis.
If these issues (and expenses) have been present in other counties of California, I fail to see how 2.6mil is a decent settlement. Sorry.
So that's how much our the future of our nation is worth? Insecure voting machines that play a part in determining who is elected to office...and it's only worth $2.6 million? What a bunch of B.S., $2.6 million is nothing close to what they should pay, if you ask me.
Huh.....I guess many can buy everything.
Well if democracy costs $2.6 million, how much for a quasi-constitutional theocracy?
And when do we get our votes back? This is crap. Thanks california for striking another blow for democracy. :P
we will end no whine before its time
When I buy a service that isn't delivered as advertised, I get a full refund.
I'm disappointed that California didn't pursue criminal charges. A civil suit may be sufficient to deal with honest mistakes, but if, as seems to be the case, Diebold repeatedly made changes to software after certification, that's a deliberate malfeasance. These people need to learn that elections are serious business. These aren't candy machines.
Making a shoddy e-voting system
Bad for buisness.
Coding the e-voting system worse than M$ does with IE
Regrettable.
Being able to buy a states opinion of your product 2.6 million.
Nice.
Rigging the election to ensure your choice wins.
Priceless!
By the article, it says that Diebold "has also agreed to certain technology and reporting obligations that will provide election officials with a better understanding of how to use its voting machines." So it looks to me that they aren't going to fix the problems with the machines, just let people know how to use the voting machines. It would be nice if they actually fixed the machines and the security flaws...
They may or may not settle, but I don't see the point. Just moving a lump sum of money may serve as punishment / compensation, but doesn't do anything about the issues with these voting machines, does it? Better to have Diebold work on that. Or better yet, stop relying on electronic voting machines at all.
There are 4 boxes in defense of liberty... ah, you know the drill.
about $0.05 US?
If the price to pay for insecure voting machines is only $2.6M, how much does it cost to be installed as president?
Presumably, you could be leader of the 'free' world for a rather reasonable sum.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Didn't people say these things were insecure to begin with. Didn't those Diebold guys tell us there wasn't. Didn't California agree with them.
$2.6 million dollars in nothing for something on this scale. It seems like just enough to seem serious. I don't think I'm a conspiracy theorist, but there does seem to be some kind of agenda. Oh well.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
Indeed. If the machines were indeed flawed, and Bush "won" at 51%, then all states who used those damn machines should ALL hold another set of voting - maybe Bush SHOULDN'T still be in power after all.
I don't trush Bush, and I don't trust Microsoft. Funny how those TWO things were involved in this affair.
How much of the money goes to the lawyers concerned?
California seriously has a seriously fucked up government. You can thank the rolling power outages it had on its hippies who wanted to place heavy fines to re-start power generators that were required to remain idle due to environmental legislation. Now you can thank the California government for the voting troubles they have because they jumped into e-voting without thinking.
How about this, why don't you Californians put together an initiative for the 2006 ballot making the use of Diebold voting machines in CA elections illegal? ...just a thought.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Harvard does a study about cost of cell phones in regards to cell phones and lost lives saying that business of $46 billion is more important than losing 2600 people to cell phone related car accidents. Thus, the value of a human life is around $17,692,307
Diebold faulty voting machines -> Bush gets relected -> War in Iraq Continues -> 10,000 - 100,000 innocent people die.
Diebold should have to pay a lot more than 2.6 million. In my estimate, they should be paying around 1.7 trillion.
30 percent of our national vote was cast on non-voter-verified electronic voting machines. Ohio also was at about 30 percent.
Realistically we will never know who exactly was elected this year and that's a big problem.
Until we can address the voting machine issue proper (with voter-verified votes at a minimum) Americans have lost their democracy for all intents and purposes.
Interestingly the only state that got this right was frickin Nevada. They did use the machines, but insisted that they produce voter-verified paper trails.
The rest of the nation could actually learn a thing or two from Nevada of all places.
In addition to all of that, what I find most hard to swallow is the lack of action on the part of our elected officials to avoid this mess. Election supervisors have known for years literally and bought the machines anyway.
This whole mess is a crime against the American People. People should be in jail over this. We send people away for far less (like duping a movie).
Sorry for the rant, but this issue bothers me more than any other because I cannot trust our national election. Even though I live in a state (Oregon) with a pretty solid voting system, my solid vote means nothing in light of Florida and Ohio both with significant election irregularities.
I am not convinced we actually chose our President this year. Americans should be just a bit more upset about that than they are. We get press reports on the Ukraine yet we see almost nothing about our own failed election.
Finally, this is not about who won or lost. It's that we will never actually know...
Blogging because I can...
Hmm
Diebold?! Election?! :(
Cool! Who's handing out the free tin-foil hats?
lamely enough, you only widened the page about one character. You suck.
Ceci n'est pas un post
Hax0r #1: "Yo did you see that l33t webpage i haX0red?"
Hax0r #2: "Yoyo did you see who i haX0red in to the whitehouse?"
I have to return some videotapes...
Also, forgive me for being ignorant, but if it concerns their citizens in such a manner, why is it that the citizens don't get to choose whether to settle or pursue criminal charges?
I think you need to switch those two...
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It makes me sick that ANYONE thinks democracy can be bought for such a small price.
...this is what I want:
I want an amendment to the state constitution requiring all methods of voting to have a verifiable audit trail.
I want this proposed settlement to cover the cost of implementing a verifiable audit trail in the counties that Diebold shafted. Including replacing defective machines. They broke our democracy, they're gonna pay to fix it.
That's what I want the pointy end of this lawsuit to do: patch the electronic voter fraud exploit. This is a non-partisan goal. America depends on election integrity.
It is indeed another resounding blow struck against democracy. For a nation-building nation that appears to be set on exporting democracy at gunpoint, one would think that its own state of democracy would be setting a better example.
Iraqi politicians should start taking Diebold management out to lunch, if they haven't done so already.
(As always, any loathing contained in this post is not directed at Americans in general. It is directed purely at the current administration, the neocons and all the moderate Republicans that sat back and let them and their christian fundamentalist armies take over a nation I used to admire.)
Diebold bought the election for Bush. Here's a funny comic on the matter: http://www.bushspeaks.com/img/rove-poses-for-diebo ld-ad.jpg
The price of this election now includes perhaps $2.6M in Diebold settlement, and the price of installing Gov. Schwarzenegger (in another rigged election), to OK it. With Bush raising well over $200M to win, and in control of something like $10T in debt over the next 10 years, the election is cheap. California can just take that $2.6M instead of the $8B that Schwarzenegger won't be suing to get from Enron in CA overcharges.
--
make install -not war
Unless of course it's a company that's done the killing.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
For those of you who don't code, != is C code for does not equate to.
For a little fun, see exactly where a little Diebold campaign money goes:
/.'ers, is just the tip of the iceberg.
from the public record...
Crowther, John Michael Mr.
8/27/2003 $2,000.00
Canton, OH 44708
Diebold Inc. -[Contribution]
BUSH-CHENEY '04 INC
D' Amico, Thomas R. Mr.
9/3/2003 $2,000.00
Canton, OH 44718
Diebold Inc. -[Contribution]
BUSH-CHENEY '04 INC
and that
Never mind that the Carter Center, which supervises elections around the world, considers our systems fubar.
And yet I do love America still. Curious indeed.
befuddled (noun) 1. Unable to create a pithy sig
Gee. I bet the wankers who gave hundreds of millions to each presidential candidate feel so fricken stupid.
The biggest cost to Diebold is the bad press. Their customers are bureaucrats and politicians, who generally have their finger in the wind.
Unfortunately most of the focus appears to be to accuse Diebold of trying to steer the election toward the Republicans. While that would be a bad thing of awesome proportions, I think all the talk abou it misses the point.
The real issue is having an open, verifiable ballot box, so *no one* can abuse the ballot device to affect the results of an election.
Diebold wants a closed, "certified" ballot box. I don't think they want it that way to influence elections. I think they want it that way because they see secrecy as their best road to a profit. Never mind ensuring the correctness of their programs through open review; that would cost them a business advantage (they think).
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
They said "trust us", then they violated that trust. End of story.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
2.6 Trillion -
to help cover the costs of the endless Iraq War,
that seems fair.
what worthless piece of shit operating system these lousy insecure voting systems run on?
Go to http://www.votergate.tv to learn more about that and take note of the incredibly robust database that is used by the voting software!
It is mind numbing stupidity (or much worse!) on the part of people who approve this crap.
Can you say "Voter Verifiable Paper Trial"?
Nah, I didn't think so cause there is no such thing with these machines.
The biggest and best democracy in the universe has no idea if their last election is valid. Hmmm.
1. The United Nations offer a service that may be useful. There a many satisfied clients. Get the UN election observers in.
2. Swallow some of that arrogant pride and ask some of the other democacies how they do it. Most of them manage to poll their entire country (compulsory voting) with little confusion or uncertainty and even do it within the hours of 9 to 5.
Idea !
Subcontract your elections out to experts. Any of the European Union countries, Australia, New Zealand.. They can do it for you.
And to think, it costs far less to rig an election (or, if one were to assume Diebold were acting out of incompetence instead of malice, to run an election so poorly that the votes don't matter) than to actually run a campaign.
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." - Ford Prefect
And you are pissed about an election being stolen?
Get out there early with a product. Do not worry about it being right or correct. Simple get it out there and try to corner the market. If sued, hold off as long as possible and then finally settle.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...for all the "found" ballots in King Country for the Democrat candidate.
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you!
makes a valid point.
The same day the settlement was announce the change in stock price alone was several fold the vlaue of the settlement. It's a crock. The value of the trial and the evidence discovery value would have grossly exceeded any cash value to the state of CA. shame on them for settleing.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The problem is not with crappy software or rigged machines. The problem we face is that, when a bunch of American voters stood up and protested that they were too stupid to use paper ballots properly, we tried to come up with a pre-school level voting machine instead of saying, "Okay, some people really ARE too stupid to vote."
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
Heh.
Welcome to the corporate shield. Finding a corporation is easy - finding individuals within that corporation to be criminally culpable for the corporation's actions is much, much more difficult (financial fraud is a somewhat exceptional case, in case Enron et al come to mind).
All too often, this reduces their following the law to be a mere matter of cost-benefit analysis. If it makes them more money, they break the law, pay the fine... and profit.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
The real fun begins when Disney sues to have some of it's people put in place as president instead of mickey mouse, who was unavailable at the time.
SAILING MISHAP
The Democrats stole California from Bush!
I have 7 friends dead and another one crippled for life because of the election scandle.
True a fair election would not have brought them back. We could have at least started investigating the role of republicans that backed terrorists in Afganistan in 1985-1990 and directly caused September 11, 2001 though support for Bin Laudin.
I mean both Ronald Regan and George Bush Sr.
"I do not remember" is not an excuse for a president, we have white house records to "let him remember"
The whole weapon sales to Iran scandle with Oliver North, lied by omission on the fact that they were also selling chemical and biological weapons to Iraq at the same time.
Whoever filled out the votes that didn't count should be contacted and told why their ballots were thrown out.
One of the big problems happening in San Diego mayor's election recently, is how thousands of ballots were not included because the voter only wrote their candidate down without also checking the box. Including them would have affected the outcome, and the winner is practically saying, "It's not may fault they can't follow the instructions".
People have a right to know if and why they were disenfranchised.
Funny Thing is, I thing honour with a u is actually the brit spelling (brit and canadian). In America, there is no u in "honor". Very interesting...
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
...but since this is Slashdot, that fact won't stand in the way of ultra-liberal conspiracy therorists (as opposed to the general conspiracy theorist population,) jumping to the conclusion that Kerry lost the election due to the uncertified patch being applied in other states.
I'm a UK citizen and was recently alarmed to find that my vote in the last election was not counted. On further investigation I find that I'm actually not allowed to vote at all! I don't understand, George W Bush took my country to war and for some reason I'm unable to vote him out of office. Can anyone explain this to me?
In regard to the topic: the idea of speeding up so called 'antiquated' voting systems with modern technology is clearly flawed. Speed up the voting = speed up the voting fraud. Voting should be something that is as slow and painful as the act of being governed itself. But then that doesn't make for good tv.
China and Russia are rearming becuase of our "cowboy politics"...
Where under Clinton, China was rearming because the Clinton administration was allowing them to purchase advanced technology at a price too good to pass up.
If you really believe that the Bush presidency provides the Chinese with a reason to arm against us (vice against a general unpredictable threat, such as their neighbor North Korea,) you need to study international relations a bit more, or possibly get a rectal craniotomy.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the first case to be true.
Let's all grab torches and pitch forks and meet back at Diebold headquarters in half an hour.
COULD compromise election results? COULD? COULD!?!?!?!?!
How about DID compromise election results?
It's disgusting that the media in this country has nothing to say about hos nov 2 was a complete an utter failure.
I swear Canada looks a little better every year.
I keep seeing everyone talk about wanting to use electronic voting machines to vote with. Why do we not use a scan tron that has each person running for the desired position on a line, and we fill in the bubble next to their name? It really does not get any easier then that. This also has a paper trail so a recount is possible.
How does an electronic voting machine help improve the situation? I honestly do not know. Perhaps another brillant idea by someone who thinks adding a computer to a situation that does not need changing? Oh well.
Brendan
Alright, this'll probably go 1000 comments. Everyone will comment on the fact that money is an unsatisfactory remedy for voting fraud. Then it'll die. The media won't pick it up, 2.6 million is not an impressive number. The average person won't care, and all will proceed as usual. Just because we know something is wrong doesn't mean the average person does.
Remember, this is the country that uses intellectual elite as a pejorative term.
You wonder why public schools suck? An educated populace wouldn't tolerate this shit. The government has no need to make them better when ignorance is rewarded and they can stay in power by keeping them poor.
And, before you flame me, I went to public school.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Given recent history - Enron, Global Crossing, Diebold, Microsoft, Haliburton - I think we should implement a corporate death penalty for certain corporate crimes (esp e.g. Diebold and Haliburton - both arguably guilty of treason).
"Settlements" are bullshit. The corp pays to a set of politicians some money - those same polititicians that Diebold was cnotracted to install in office? Sounds a lot more like a kick-back than a settlement.
It's interesting that this California peice made the news - a place where apparently the politicos are willing to let Diebold settle. The situation in certain other states - Ohio, Georgia, Florida, for instance - is indicative of outright criminal activity for which the company should be brought up on charges. Treason is not to strong a word.
In order for that to work, though, there would have to be a mechanism to impose a sentence appropriate to the crime upon the corporation. Maybe seizure of assets, nullification of incorporation status, revocation of licenses. The corporate officers should also be charged and incarcerated, banned from participating in corporations or sitting on boards for some period of time.
In a case like Diebold, the siezed assets would have to be distrubuted to someone besides the politicians who paid Diebold (with public funds) to put them in office - perhaps the money could be used to finance eclections, pay for audits and recounts, etc.
"The Internet is made of cats."
Pretty amazing seeing what happens to those in politics who cross Diebold.
Apparently our Governator has taken sides. Pity.
Got bored over the summer and found this document which shows how to get past diebold's password "security" on the counting software and made a video on how I did it. It is beyond silly how easy this is.
-Mike
Somehow the money will help to make up for the freedoms that we have lost due to their faulty work? I'm not sure if this is just me, but this doesn't make sense.
Money = Freedoms and secutriy
Well, now I know a fact, might as well give up on the American dream. Grapes of Wrath here I come!
eh, food for thought...
When I look at the fundamentals of the Diebold design, I can't see any fundamental purpose of the design of these machines other than to facilitate fraud. No strong authentication. No basic mean of tracking tampering. Closed source. No paper trail. Even places like India and Bulgaria allegedly have more secure voting machines. What does it say about the Democrats that they would also something like this to pass through unchallenged? I think part of it was that there just wasn't any decent technical review here. All the Diebold folks had to do is throw some money around.
Uh, you are wrong. Nevada is not the only state that got the election technology right. They are the only ones who got touch screen voting right, but many states didn't not use touch screen voting.
I know you are kidding but it's no joking matter.
America is a country where anything and everything is for sale. In America you can buy a kidney, you can buy a vote, you can buy a womb if you don't want to carry your own child, you can even buy a child, heck you can have children imported from other parts of the world.
All perfectly legal.
Americans used to think that it would be an abomination to buy and sell children, organs, or rent space in a woman's womb for 9 months but not anymore.
It's funny but sick too.
evil is as evil does
Someone needs to make a MasterCard parody of this situation.
They should rename /. to kiddie dot given many of the really dumb posts.
$2.6 Million is kinda cheap for the Office of President. But I guess what's important is that the lawyers got paid well.
Does anyone else see the irony in poster's pathetic claim that Diebold screwed up because they did what a lot of corporations do (failed to maintain strict controls, follow procedure etc), but he/she feels it's okay to pine about a free ipod?
They'd portray him as some sort of computer whiz-kid, say he bypassed the "best electronic protection ever invented for a voting system", "defeated the best minds in computer security with just a handheld PDA and a memory card", and then rake him over the coals for Diebold's mistake.
US Presidential Election's "Ohio Vote Apparently Hacked" http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121704Z.shtml
My brother-in-law Chad is grateful there were no jokes at his expense this time around. We couldn't decide if he was a pregnant Chad, a swinging door Chad, or a dangling Chad. Only my sister would know that one. Well, all I can say is DieBold,Die!
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Same as we always did - Like most problems worth changing are way too big to change by pointing a gun at them.
What are we supposed to do - Rise up en masse, storm Diebold and kill every body we find?
Should we all take congress hostage and start killing if we can't get a verified paper trail within 48 hours?
Please. Tell me how you fix a crooked election with a few armed rabble rousers. Nobody in Central America has managed to do it in the last thirty years or so, and they're all armed to the teeth - Not just guns, but dynamite, land mines, RPGs and surface-to-air missles - But I'm sure you've got the perfect solution.
Then pursue criminal charges. Surely "treason" could be on the list.
...when corporaitions are granted the same constitutional rights as an individual, yet face no signifigant consequences let alone anything equal to the imprisonment of an individual.
We'd live in quite a different world if corporations were held to the same standard of punishment as the individual. Say, the inability to keep their profits for 25 to life. Even better, if the major shareholders faced personal fines or imprisonment for the actions of their companies.
Corporations are the cause of everything wrong in this country. Political coruption, the war machine, polution, ad creep, health care, our health problems, blah blah blah. What we really need is the ability to rescind corporate charters.
k:pThis too, will end.
If we really want to set things right. We could always go back to the older system. First, we elect our House. Then the House picks the Senate. Then the Senate picks the Prez. Really guys, there is no way to make a "secure" method of voting. Rigging elections dates back well before we were around, Diebold is just this year's scapegoat. Also remember, people. The U.S. is NOT a democracy; it's a republic. Be grateful some bastard a hundred years ago proposed that the public's opinion be more readily measured than getting around 500 old men to choose our leader for us.
How did they determine how much to pay out? By vote? Using Diebold equipment?
Table-ized A.I.
US Presidential Election's "Ohio Vote Apparently Hacked". Do you think it would be alright to let
people decide who gets to rule the country? No way.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121704Z.shtml
Bought negligence and incompetence, wins you elections. Money rules the game.
lock the barn doors, the horses have gotton out.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Yup, the Diebold machines were definitely used to compromise election results. How else could Kerry win California?
Isn't that less than one cent for every U.S. citizen they screwed?
Everyone talks about how horribly insecure the touchscreens are.
But in a lot of counties that didn't use them, the results from things like optical scanners were still stored and calculated using GEMS. Which is not too secure.
Read that, and then read this.
The problems weren't with touchscreens. They were with GEMS, though. But whoever hacked Florida knew enough to not mess with touchscreens: they went right to the source, and that's also why it wasn't spotted.
And we've all seen this, about the Democrats trying to not let Diebold supply the voting machines to Ohio, after their CEO stated that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year"?
I'm still confused as to why no one (in mainstream America) seems to care at all. There was blatant fraud going on, particularly in Florida counties.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Diebold ATM's: Reciept.
Diebold Voting machines: No Reciept.
Enough said.
That's right. All your base.
Sadly, it seems that the people in power think along the lines of 'wow, computers are high-tech. High-tech is better, and faster, and must be better for elections'. Actually, I can't see how anyone could be that stupid. I mean its not hard, just read about the problems with electronic voting. Listen to the people explaining how hard it is to do it in a secure manner. Well, actually, it seems to me that Diebold did a pretty shitty job. If that was a project at uni, I'm sure they would have failed, or had the pay the person marking it or something...
printf("Goodbye cruel world!\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b");
"We have no law capable of describing the enormity of your crime." Rot in Hell, Diebold. Rot in Hell forever.
What Diebold is deserving of aside, consider the closest we do have to a law that is capable of describing their crime. What the Constitution defines as treason: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
Someone who would attempt to undermine the democratic process that is the bedrock of our nation is, without question, it's enemy. By creating election machines that are so grossly insecure a monkey can hack them, and fighting requirements for a paper trail tooth and nail, Diebold is guilty of giving aid to America's enemies.
For crimes on this scale, America holds only one penalty.
how much is a corrupt, rigged election worth. More than 2.6 million, I'd wager.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Just today I've been reading articles about google suggest, yahoo maps showing traffic in real-time.. I saw a clip of QRIO dancing better than i ever will..
What is so hard about building a machine that scans marks on paper and keeps the data secure?
I don't think anything will ever be hack-proof or 100% free from errors but.. come on is it really that hard?
Anybody here want to take on this challenge and build us some proper vote-counting machines?
Elections here use big mark-sense ballots, which are scanned when they go into the locked ballot box. You mark them with a felt-tip marker, using big marks that are unambiguous. They're counted automatically, but can easily be recounted manually if necessary. Any single ballot box can be recounted and verified against the scanner results for that box, so it's easy to check the accuracy of the system.
Here's his take on Diebold:
No ambiguity there.
Slocum has an RSS feed for election issues.
freedom costs ... a buck oh five
The Clint Curtis story is tracked by the Brad Blog.
Half the federal taxes? Fuck you.
Corporations pay less taxes than I do.
Then, they go on to write laws that fuck me in the ass, and you're talking about socialism? At least in a fucking socialist country EVERYBODY but the president and his men gets fucking SHAFTED.
They already did. Except they elected Mickey Mouse and Donald Rumsfeld.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
... that we have actually PRIVATIZED THE VOTE.
Just let that sink in for a few minutes. We took the single most important tool of citizenship... and SOLD IT.
What the fuck is wrong with our country?
+++ATH0
" flaws in the Diebold systems that could compromise election results."
Not to mention the optical scanners, and the Florida programmer who wrote a vote rigging program, and the company bozos in Ohio who took the friggin' machines apart before a recount and told the voter people to put the totals on the wall so no one would see them and use those totals to make sure the hand recount came out equal to the machine total...
Even stupid ass Kerry is starting to realize something went wrong here...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
$2.6 million? 2.6 MILLION!!! fu*k that. is that the price of a faulty election? gross negligence, the possible attempt at rigging an election, the lies and deceit. $2.6 is all this is worth? i don't even believe in capital punishment and all i can think is to fu*king hang them.
That makes me feel better! Is that like half of what the republican party initially invested?
Even if it's double the amount they initially payed, I'm sure they'll make it back with Haliburton kickbacks. Ahhh the sweet smell of american politics, uniquely similar to the smell of money and horse shit.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
by settling out of court, there are no decisions and no "findings of fact", thus, it sets no precident that can be used to justify furthur lawsuits and/or corrections in their systems.
its just money, and that's the easy part.
bleh.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
A California court has approved a $2.6 million settlement between Diebold and the State of California and Alameda County. The state and county had sued Diebold for fraudulent claims about the security of its electronic voting machines. ..And this fixes the bugs, how?
Yes I read the rest of it. So now they will carry on using the same system (plus afew 'reports') and it will stay insecure. Kinda like the people who sue Tabaco companies and walk out of the court room already lighting up again.
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let alone the votes of an entire state. This is a slap on the wrist and won't even slow diebold down in its push to unload flakey voting solutions on dimwitted politicians [or are they conniving politicians who actually welcome abusable voting tools that come with a smoke screen of reliablity through technology?]
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Why was the fight against these machines BEFORE THE ELECTION so freaking weak?
Exit poll variance based objections to the Ukraine election results is pretty rich coming from the U.S.
And the Dems let it happen lying down. I hope Howard Dean gets the DNC chair position, cause YOU GUYS NEED BIG CHANGE!
The so called "elected government", this regime so far.
Starting a war based on completely false public utterances by public officials,utterances claimed as 100% fact at the time of congressional "authorisation" for war, but proven a total lie, thereby killing Americans unlawfully. Having insider knowledge of a "terrorist attack" going down on US soil and keeping that knowledge hidden,allowing the attack to continue, also ordering lesser ranking officials to help in the coverup, and generally obfuscating a lot of the facts of the case. Treason, malfeasance in office, murder, accessory to murder, theft of government services, accessory to theft of government services, willful destruction of public property, and etc, a large potential list that is being ignored mainly
Diebold, who's owner is on record as having stated he would "deliver" the Ohio vote, and other known researchable anecdotals about his company and techs, including the revelations from the california case and what is starting to be squeezed out in Ohio slowly but surely
Helping to maintain these same exact above treasonus and so called "elected" officials in "power" by conspiring to hack the elections in various areas both in advance and during and after the fact of public voting through insecure by design, not by accident but by design, electronic voting machines, and attempting to keep that hacking hidden from the public and official oversight and regulatory bodies, and coordinating that through an entrenched political party's high level officials
treason, accessory, malfeasance, accessory to murder, theft of government services, destruction of government property with destroyed or altered vote records, and etc,and quite a few more
You minimise and ignore and over-trivialise quite a lot of the publically available evidence that has been uncovered so far. A small fine is an obvious payoff and a continuance of this massive junta hijacking and political takeover and coverup
There's way, WAY more than enough for several different grand jury investigations to go forward, yet none are, because the junta will not "investigate" itself willingly or adequately,(please, the 9-11 commission was a big fat joke) nor will it tolerate lesser political office efforts, they can be coerced and co-opted by higher level authority who have shown zero compunction about using massive ultra violence to get their way on any issue. None. There's your reason for this. They kill people daily, have killed in the past, will continue to kill in the future, and that is why so many people who might be so inclined are afraid to go forward with these various cases, it's a pretty severe actual bona fide physical risk, even if you might be a lower level official who's job it might be to investigate such matters throughly. People aren't stupid when it comes to such matters. Much easier to announce a small joke fine and say "case closed, nothing to see here, move along now".
WTF does a free ipod have to do with voting and our national voting procedure? I could see if you said my sig was annoying...but not ironic. If you don't want to see sigs...just turn them off like most people do. It's easy as pie, MR. A.C., next time at least reply when logged in so we can all marvel at your wonderful sig as well.
I think you missed the project success criterea here. If the objective of the project was to commit fraud, they've done a pretty decent job. I tend to think computers _are_ good for data processing jobs like election-computers are also very helpful devices for commiting fraud-particularly when the mangement team of the organization being attacked itn't tech savvy.
As long as we are willing to put up with fraud, it will certainly continue. But there is a way to fight it directly, put a huge Bounty on the heads of the thieves. Make the bad guys wonder if their "friends" are thinking about ratting them out for the money. Somebody is trying to do just this, go to http://electionfraudbounty.org and you will see what I mean. I'm supporting them, I hope you will too.
the people that originally brought the suit are not at all happy with the settlement and are trying to fight it. the diebold press release about the supposedly court-approved settlement came out of the blue and caught them off guard.
b oard.cgi?az=show_thread&omm=0&om=50&forum=DCForumI D4408):
there was a judge looking into the settlement... let's see what happens.
this is from a 12/14 post from the lawyer involved (http://www.blackboxvoting.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dc
===
From: JimMarch
"Heads up, y'all: the Alameda lawsuit has developments!"
To catch y'all up:
Last October elections lawyer Lowell Finley came to me with the idea of making Diebold give a refund for junk voting machines based on laws regarding defrauding the gov't when making sales. Electronic voting law is new and poorly developed; contractor fraud law is MUCH older and much stronger.
I said I'd do it as long as Bev was a plaintiff too.
We filed the suit "under seal" (per the rules) in Alameda County Superior Court in November of '03. The California Attorney General (AG)'s office extended the seal several times while deciding whether or not to "join in", finally doing so Sept. of '04.
About a month ago, the AG's office announced a "proposed settlement" with Diebold, for peanuts. They claimed total damages of $2.6mil and offered Bev and I $76k a piece so long as we didn't complain about this "sweetheart deal", the announcement of which caused Diebold's stock to bump up by over $42mil the next day alone. We were told that any attempt to derail the "proposed settlement" would lead to the AG's office arguing that Bev and I should get nada.
We had already decided to fight this thing regardless, even if it meant colliding with the state's top lawyer. We don't have "veto power" over the proposed settlement, but we do get the right to speak against it before the judge. We assumed that would be a brutal fight with long odds.
But then a funny thing happened.
Alameda County assigned an unusual judge. They pulled the former head of the entire county court system out of retirement, a guy name of William McKinstry. Our sources so far say he's good. And with no other cases on his docket, he seems to be paying attention to what's going on...before we even got a chance to file our opposition data, he put out a set of questions to all the lawyers involved that shows...well, he's deep into "smells a rat mode". Check out what he wrote, verbatim:
http://www.equalccw.com/judgesmellsarat.pdf
Note that the "Qui Tams" is basically Latin for "whistleblowers" - Bev and I.
This document is unbelievably good. We not only have a chance here, the judge is already questioning what's up.
Folks, if we can derail this "proposed settlement", Diebold is in deep kimchee. They either have to come up with a lot more money, or face discovery which is gonna be brutal considering they've now admitted ownership of the 15,000 or so internal memos in the Federal case recently won by Indymedia and EFF. Between that and the other bodies buried which Bev and I know about, discovery will be "anal probe level sans lube" }>. They'll do *anything* to avoid that, possibly right up to quitting the elections biz.
Oh yeah. Hell yeah.
Jim March
http://www.equalccw.com/voteprar.html
===
his 12/17 post in the same thread said: "Actions are being taken. Won't have a real report until Monday at the earliest, maybe longer. But yeah, we haven't given up...be stupid to do so with the judge asking those questions."
...to buy some votes.
/pro
Instead of sponsoring an election campaign you just pay off a voting machine manufacturer.
Flamebait??? WTF?!? LOL.
with your rebuttal is that you fail to recognize that the source code for Diebold's voting machines has *not* been given governmental review of any kind. Diebold showed the government a black box and said, "look! electronic voting!" and the government bought it, no questions asked about the internal workings because the internal workings were a "trade secret."
You can't. Make the vote. A trade secret.
The internal workings of mechanical voting machines, at least, are well-documented and understood, at least according to my stepfather who works in the NYC Board of Elections.
+++ATH0
Since these people are so completely and totally disconnected from objective reality, I can only conclude that they are seriously mentally ill.
They seem to be suffering from the mental disease known as socialism - a mental illnesses ranging in degree from the disorder of modern "liberalism" to the absolute deranged lunacy of radical communism.
Only commitment to a psychiatric facility, extensive shock therapy treatment, and loads of tranquilizers and antipsychotics could possibly be of any help to these sick people. Maybe that's not even enough.
As for voting, why the fuck does any county EVER need overly sophisticated computer touchscreen hardware when paper ballots with optical scan machines work just fine? If I remember correctly, it was the Demonrats and the Left who were clamoring for computerized voting systems so as to make casting a ballot easier for the senile elderly and the crack-addled inner-city ghetto dwellers who are too brain damaged to vote properly with paper ballots.
talk about that.
This about the broken trust created by non-verifiable voting systems in use today, not who won or didn't.
Blogging because I can...
You are spot on in that regard. I simply was calling the problem electronic voting presents to many people today.
There are other states, mine included, that handled their elections in a trustworthy way.
Still, the states that appear to matter are nothing more than a clusterfuck right now which invalidates our solid votes.
It needs to get fixed. We need to bitch long and loud until it does or we have no democracy here.
Blogging because I can...
The counting can, and used to be, distributed. We can count everything precinct by precinct and get the numbers we need in a few hours.
There is no reason why Americans cannot count their own votes.
Some would say we would have to pay lots of people, or that we don't have enough time.
Bull. Look at all the senior citizens we have in this nation. Many of them are civic minded and many of them are capable. Let them get the counting done under direct public observation.
Doing this would cost us a lot less than these machines and their connection to the voter news service and the media currently do.
Did you know that the voter news service is the sole reporting agency used for all the major network election reports? Did you know they are highly secretive?
We are watching a battle right now in the Ukraine over transparancy when all but a very small percentage of our votes are handled by a single corporation that has clear ties to one party?
We can and should count our votes. There are plenty of people willing and able to do it.
Blogging because I can...
What can we do other than bring the issue to the table over and over again?
The 'winners' sure are not going to do it, now are they?
Blogging because I can...
Sorry, you're correct. Einsteinian gravitation would have been a better example. While Einsteinian gravitation explains many observed phenomena, it has not been reconciled with quantum theory in certain circumstances. Intelligent Design's argument is akin to arguing that, since Einstein doesn't completely coincide with all observed fact, we should go back to using epicycles or assuming stars are sources of light placed on a very high overhead firmament. Or, from a 19th century point of view, arguing Newtonian mechanics' failings should require a return to epicycles prior to Einstein's revision of gravitation.
I don't see a huge distinction between assigning responsibility for creation to one or multiple gods really, and the first 14 centuries of Christianity tend to point to rather the opposite of your arguments that Christianity supported scientific inquiry. Now the battle between the concepts of free will and predestination, that's a different matter.
I read the article and was singularly unimpressed. Regarding your other points, scientific theories are not about faith. A scientific theory is testable. Intelligent Design is fundamentally not testable. In contrast, evolution has predicted that we may find new intermediary fossils between known species, and that has repeatedly happened since the theory was first proposed. There may be holes in the fossil record which may require refinement of our understanding of the processes by which evolution operates, but that doesn't mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater. The Human Genome Project has shown us that we are still missing a big part of the picture of how genes are expressed to form complex life forms. Renewed interest in introns, formerly "junk DNA" has resulted since the 20,000 or so protein gene sequences in the human genome were much fewer than what was expected to be necessary for the complexity of the human species. Perhaps once we finally understand that, we will have a better understanding of how some mutation mechanisms may explain apparent gaps in the fossil record.
If somebody believes in a god, then they may be a Deist or a theist, but they are not an agnostic. An agnostic will accept the possibility that there may exist a creator that started the universe, as well as the possibility that the universe may not have had a creator.
The truth is that creation is not a testable, predictive theory and therefore is not a scientific theory that can be taught
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
If Americans learnt readin' and writin', voting machines would be completely unnecessary.
In other news, did you know that Eliot Ness became chairman of Diebold in 1944?
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
that I certainly don't think Diebold has the nation's best interests at heart--but just saying "look, they changed it after getting certified, they're traitors!" is going a bit far.
1st off let me say that you over extend your point. A theory is an idea that has a process that can be used to prove or disprove it. BUT, I would not call what is written in the bible a fable, legend and so on. We know a few things, 1st the bible has countless witnesses through out time and just because they have passed away does not make thier testimony null and void. 2nd we do have other 3rd party records showing of some things occuring that co-insides with the bible. For example a recent slashdot article that says the earth probably under went a sudden change ~5,200 years ago. Well that is around the time of the flood +/-300 years. We have historians in Egypt, Rome, etc recording what 1st hand witnesses of either Jesus or God has done and what those witnesses have done in acting according to it, such as many 1st hand witnesses willing to die instead of claiming Jesus was not God. We have the chinese recording that the sun stayed out much longer then it should have which reflects the battle in the bible where the day light was held longer so that the Jews could win a battle. And of course this goes on and on. Of course when God was active we had witnesses all over the place and people would argue with them and of course that is thier right, but now that God has seen fit to allow this world to run itself into the ground and there are no more any LIVING witnesses that makes thier recorded reports invalid? We are so high and mighty because we have technology and they didn't? Come on you would then say that the people were idiots if they didn't live in the post 1900s. Look at the tatics of war fair. The art and engineering of the acient world. Clearly they were intelligent too. For petes sake look at the pyrimids, they still can not be acurately built in modern time using acient tools.
Lastly the arogence of America and technology is clouding your thought if you believe you are better then everyone else or anyone else in another time. Can you effectively feed thousands of people if you needed to with out your technology? Can you cook, clean, build, navigate, etc without your precious tech? Could you rebuild this world if all of a sudden all existing microchips and technology stuff blew up? Could you be able to rebuild a factory from the ground up and produce your precious technology and appliances, computers, etc if you had too with no input?
You have the benifit of thousands of years of engineering and research where they did not, that is why thier achievements were better then ours and that is why they are not stupid.
Pardon my english by the way as you can tell english is my 2nd language.
Your implication here is that computers are no different from other tools used to get a job done. As far as the actual computer is concerned, that is true. But with closed-source software running the computer, that is false.
Trusting a machine is only acceptable if we can see how it works.
Using computers running proprietary software is not just like any other machine. Would we let Diebold sell cars to our government if they had black-box engines only serviceable by Diebold?
Let them keep their money and give us their source code.
The penalty should match the damages, right? Well since they threatened our freedom, a proper penalty would be to threaten theirs. We'll be nice and give them some choice, though: Cuba, North Korea, or Iraq.
new PHd level course: Privatization in Government - it's pitfalls and promise. Is the Diebold issue an example of privatization? No. And that's the scary part. Privatization would mean outsourcing the work of tabulation and/or polling. Instead, the government purchased equipment which it ran with it's own staff. Everything involved with the Diebold machines was considered to be proprietary, from the training manuals to the software itself (there is a slashdot story about hackers who got hold of the software and exposed serious bugs in it.) It is possible that Diebold allowed a few government officials to inspect all or part of the software (as Microsoft has done with windows to allay fears in some governments), but why the need for secrecy, when the output is supposed to be in the public domain? Is it: Security by Obscurity? Profit(eering) motive? Incredibly stupid corporate culture? or some severe conflict of interest?
One word can explain what is wrong... and this constant hasn't changed since we became 'civilized' and continues to be the birth of all problems...
Greed.
When it all boils down, the fact remains that one person will feel that he/she is more entitled to resources than another person. This becomes the root of all conflicts. People are ultimately only resources to be used like energy or materials. The wars of the future (it's here already) are going to be fought in the minds of those people.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Amazing. The company builds machines to (potentially and most probably in actuality) throw the election; makes huge contributions to the Bush campaign -- and then... because of "potential" problems, they are willing to pay about --- oh, say --- 1/100 to 1/1000 of what they are apt to gain in the next round of election fixing contracts --- Let's see here. I don't think that this is a terribly encouraging news. I confess that I don't recall the exact words but they were something like We will deliver Ohio to the President. Sound familiar? Having corporations win contracts --- cool. Having a family that hobnobs with Arab Shieks. Really cool! Having a company who makes voting machines in a brace-entwined lip-lock kiss ---priceless!!!