Diebold Threatens to Pull Out of North Carolina

foobaric writes "A North Carolina judge ruled that Diebold may not be protected from criminal prosecution if it fails to disclose the code behind its voting machines as required by law. In response, Diebold has threatened to pull out of North Carolina." From the article: "The dispute centers on the state's requirement that suppliers place in escrow 'all software that is relevant to functionality, setup, configuration, and operation of the voting system,' as well as a list of programmers responsible for creating the software. That's not possible for Diebold's machines, which use Microsoft Windows, Hanna said. The company does not have the right to provide Microsoft's code, he said, adding it would be impossible to provide the names of every programmer who worked on Windows."

Comments

Re:Put up or...

[pintpusher]

What I don't get, and believe me I have no good solution, is how we can put something so critical to our country in the hands of for-profit corporations. This just irks me. There are some things that just need to be off-limits for profit-taking. Granted, the list is pretty long and voting machines aren't right at the top, but this is just common sense. Who's bone-headed idea was it to put the future of our elections and our system of government in the hands of an entity whose sole purpose is to make a profit?

The code should be submitted because...

[KrisCowboy]

Elections in America are no longer a domestic matter. The consequences this particular country's elections can be felt to the remotest corners of the civilized world. Open up the Diebold's code so everyone can be sure there are no world domination attempts going on behind the scenes. Or, move the damn thing to Linux. That would solve atleast half the problem, isn't it?

Is that a threat or a promise?

[shanen]

Diebold is one evil company, at least when it comes to voting machines. Read all about it--but mostly not in the MSM. I really hope they get caught and nailed for their vote tampering in the 2004 election.