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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?
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.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
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...
I think you need to switch those two...
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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 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.
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.
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
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
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
...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.
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.
... 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
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