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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."
about $0.05 US?
How come my guy never wins? Here in Oregon we have a much better system you vote with a #2 pencil LOL and then mail or drop off you ballot. Yes you can make your ballot with a pen first and then with a #2 pencil.
roamingfeet
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...
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
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 biggest and best democracy in the universe has no idea if their last election is valid. Hmmm.
India is the largest democracy (by population).
Who get's the 2.6 million?
"gets".
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
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
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.
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
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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
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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."