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Diebold CEO Resigns Under Cloud

Posted by Zonk on from the should-have-gone-into-another-business dept.

Philip K Dickhead writes "After numerous ethical lapses and much controversy, Diebold CEO, Wally O'Dell resigned to the applause of the markets. Diebold's price improved more than 5% today, as the story broke. Business Week is reporting that O'Dell is leaving for "personal reasons", although the news blog Raw Story cites board action on imminent securities fraud litigation, and legal challenges by states claiming fraudulent certification of Diebold voting machines. Latest vulnerability tests show an impossibly negligent attention to vote security and privacy." Not overly surprising, considering their recent childish antics in NC.

6 of 342 comments (clear)

  1. two links by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    We geeks need to contribute to the open source voting software efforts!!

    There are only two very early stage projects for the US market:

    http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/

    http://www.softimp.com.au/index.php?id=evacs

    I'm trying to help out openvotingconsortium.org and am reading up on the other one which I just found out about.

    What are you doing??

  2. 'Nuff said by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The head of Diebold is also a top fundraiser for President Bush's re-election. In a recent fund-raising letter Diebold's chief executive Walden O'Dell said he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

    'Nuff said.

  3. Re:He's served his purpose by ivanmarsh · · Score: 5, Informative

    The voting machines that were tested post election consistantly made "mistakes" in favor of republicans... and now there's a Diebold insider that confirms those reports.

    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28174
    http://ideamouth.com/voterfraud.htm
    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/19/172 7222&tid=172&tid=103&tid=219
    http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Diebold_insider__all eges_company_plagued_1206.html
    http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/09/23/bev_h arris/index_np.html

    Anything else I can do for you?

  4. Re:hmm by Michalson · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try Australia, or even India. Australia used fully open source voting machines with a paper trail - electronic voting entirely transparent and accountable to the voters. The voting machines where made by a private company using requirements drawn up by an indpendent body. The resulting code was then made available on the internet for full public scutany (and several bugs where found and corrected due to public involvement), and company employees where not allowed anywhere near the machines or the voting - no late "patches", no special "help" from the company on voting day.

    India went simple - in a country where many villages are only accessable by elephant or similar transportation, and where there is a huge population (the electorate alone is over 660 million, more then twice the US popultion), they chose to use voting machines with the simplest of components - no operating systems, no databases, just simple electronics designed to allow an official to release one vote at a time to a voting board (list of candidates with a button beside each one), and then close the unit (no more votes could be cast).

    E-voting isn't the problem, it's American politics. Privatized elections carried out with minimal or no government regulation will give you privatized results - not only have private e-voting companies refused to fix major flaws in their software, made untested and unapproved patches to voting machines hours before elections, but the results from those voting machines have been highly suspect - not just that e-voting districts have been the only ones that are wildly out of line with exit polls, and always in favor of the same party, but instances where outright fraud in favor of that same party is obvious - district e-voting machines reporting impossible numbers like many more votes then actual voters, and often negative votes for a non-republican candidate (i.e. Volusia County whose diebold machines recorded -16,022 votes for the democratic candidate). In Ohio the numbers got as high as -25 million votes for democratic candidates.

  5. Re:He's served his purpose by PostItNote · · Score: 5, Informative

    It sounds like you will only accept evidence that has proven truthful in a court of law. Give us some standards of proof here - right now the preponderance of evidence is that a) the Diebold CEO was a big Bush supporter b) Diebold machines consistently err Republican that c) http://www.electiledysfunction.org/ConyersOhioHear ing_chunk_8.wmv republican organizations were actively enquiring about how they could undetectably change the vote and that d) the election results didn't match the exit polls. If you want to indictable evidence that everyone agrees upon, then you are out of luck. All that we have is evidence of either gross stupidity or maliciousness. Since we can't rule out the former, and the lack of a paper trail outrules testing whether vote switching occurred, it's circumstantial evidence forever. If you are determined to think the best of the man, then nothing anyone says will convince you otherwise.

    But since he's either too dumb to be a CEO or too evil, either way I'm gald he's gone.

  6. Re:He's served his purpose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did you know....

    1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

    http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

    2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

    http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
    http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

    3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

    http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html
    http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

    4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml
    http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

    5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

    http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html
    http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

    6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

    http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26
    http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
    http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

    7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

    http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m
    http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

    8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

    http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
    http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

    9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

    http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
    http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex.html