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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."
This is why Microsoft Windows is not a good choice for embedded systems. System designers should choose an unecumbered system such as Linux or BSD, particularly if any kind of security is required, like for voting or banking.
:)
It suprises me that Diebold fails at this stuff so badly, considering how they've been doing it for years. I cringe every time I roll up to an ATM with their name on it. Luckily, my bank uses mostly NCR hardware
Something must be very wrong if the supplier is threatening the customer. What happened to the free market? If Diebold don't want the business, I'm sure another enterprising company will appreciate it.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
It is my understanding that this is a fairly common requirement for government contracts involving software. Diebold should have been aware of such requirements before competing for the contract. I mean, when the government's actually being responible and not just handing out plums to favored campaign contributors.
Hell, they're probably not even going to audit the code. They just want to protect themselves if Diebold goes out of business, or loses the contract on re-bid or something. I mean, sure, they can potentially audit the code, but I haven't heard of such a thing ever happening. It's about support and fixin' bugs an shit.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In fact, where advancement is needed the most, the incentive for profit is increased, because, unsurprisingly, the chance for big rewards leads people to take big risks.
Risks are called that for a reason. If Boeing wants to take risks developing an aircraft that's their buisness. We're not (supposed to be) obligated to buy it - and if it crashes into the desert, it's abundantly clear that it didn't work.
But voting machines are a different beast. If they don't work (and this is only more of a problem without a paper trail) it's very difficult to prove it. So the real question is this -- do we want people taking risks with the electoral process?
Ultimately there needs to be some metric by which Diebold's (and it's competitors') machines are judged. In the absence of that metric, a free market is impossible and they are quite literally taking risks with our Republic.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Diebold is trying to interpret the statute to mean more than it says.
NC doesn't want to know who coded Windows or to get Windows source code: NC wants to see the software package that tracks and tallies the votes. Yes, you could try to stretch the meaning of the statute, but NC isn't trying to do that: Diebold is trying to in order to claim that compliance with the statute is impossible.
The real issue here is that Diebold doesn't want NC to see what's in Diebold's code. Makes it awfully suspect to me...
Life is short: void the warranty.
[Rant]
I am a Citizen and an Elector (member of the Electorate) in the US. That puts me at the TOP of the pyramid in the election process. In the US, the Electorate is Sovereign. Where does Diebold or any other corporate entity get off trying to dictate how elections are held? They act like they have some god-given right to make money off of the process. Fuck that! They have a right to come grovelling, hat in hand, and ASK if maybe, just maybe, we might want to use some equipment they want to sell. We get to set the rules about how elections are held, not them.
My county uses optical scan ballots and ballot box readers. If a precinct shows some sort of wierd result, the elections commissioner, in the company of plenty of witnesses, pops that sucker open and looks at the ballots. End of problem.
I frankly don't give a damn if results aren't available until Wednesday morning, or even Friday. They aren't certified official for weeks, anyway. The only difference early results make is who gets hammered for what reason at what post-election party.
There is nothing more important than the election process. All legitimacy of the government flows directly from it. Diebold has no fucking place dictating any damn thing about that. Paper ballots work. If they are slow and more costly, that is a small fucking price to pay for legitimacy.
[/Rant]
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Or how about you send each registered voter a voting card, which they hand in at a polling station on election day. They get given a voting paper, go into a booth, mark and seal their paper, then drop it into a black box. Votes are then counted by hand later. Say, that could work
The problem with that is that the votes get counted by a human being and human beings have prejudances. Anybody who tells you that they are 100% impartial is lying.
Care to tell me what exactly is wrong with the lever based voting machines that New York has used for the last 40 years? The voter signs in -- if there are any problems they get challenged by an inspector (very rare) -- they go into the machine, they pull down levers, the votes are counted and that's it.
The way some other states (Florida) do elections dumbfounds me. In NYS you are allowed to take anybody into the poll with you other then your employer or union offical. I watched party hacks challenging 85 year old voters in Florida because they asked their 60 year old children for help. WTF is that nonsense? And ID requirements? Yeah, that isn't a way to screw over poor people who might not have a drivers license or DMV ID -- last time I checked those cost money.
In NYS now you are required to give your social security number or drivers license number at the time you register. The State verifies your information against the SSA or DMV database. If you can't provide that information then and only then do you get flagged for ID. And after you have showed it once then you never need to show it again. What's the problem here? There isn't much room for fraud -- in most of the districts the elections inspectors know most of the voters. And we have the right to challenge anything suspicious.
How the hell can other states fuck this up so badly?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm not sure what your problem is with human vote counts. Over here, in Germany, all votes are counted by hand; I've helped with this myself on several occasions.
And there is no way that you could play tricks when counting, either. There'll always be at least six people there at the same time, counting; people who do this are recruited randomly (it's much like jury duty). Furthermore, more often than not, officials from the local administration will be present to oversee the whole thing; and also, the vote counting is open to the public, so everyone who wants to can come in and watch the votes getting counted.
The votes are counted twice, too, so it's relatively unlikely that an error would creep in. If there is any error at all, the whole counting process starts again from scratch.
And finally, the paper ballots are kept for a long period (I know it's a two-digit amount of years, although I'm not sure how long exactly - I'd have to look that up), so *if* someone - anyone! - thinks that the election results are invalid, a recount will be done.
Compare that with the things like the 2000 presidential elections in the USA, where the supreme court ruled that a vote recount was *not* legal - how can you *ever* justify a decision like that? Vote recounts should always be possible.
There's other differences that also give me more confidence in the German voting system; for example, we typically have participation levels around 80 to 85 percent in nation-wide elections, there are no lines when you want to vote (I think the longest I ever had to wait in line to vote in my life was two minutes or so), and you don't have to register to vote - if you're over 18, you'll get a notification in the mail.
So... a paper-based voting system not only can work, but it also can inspire much more confident than an opaque system where you just pull a lever or touch a touchscreen or do something similar without ever knowing how the machine supposed to record your votes actually works - and whether it works at all.
No, electronic voting is a bad thing that needs to be gotten rid of; the whole concept is so open for abuse that it should just be thrown out completely. Even when you have a paper voting trail, who says that the machine recorded the same vote that it printed on your paper slip? The only way to make sure would be to collect the paper slips from *everyone* in the same precinct, but that's pretty much impossible - not to mention that there certainly would be a court again that would forbid it, too.
Stick with paper voting. Everything else is bad for democracy, and voting is such a fundamental process in a democratic system that it should be treated with the utmost care. If you cannot *prove* that the new system you're proposing is not only as safe as the old one but also brings tangible improvements, then it shouldn't be adopted, and electronic voting, in whatever form, does neither.