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Diebold CEO Resigns Under Cloud
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.
anyone here really trust the age of digital voting? i dont even have faith in the system when votes are done by hand, much less so in digitizing it.
Boy, is this long overdue. This man bears a lot of responsibility for the current lack of confidence in the legitimacy of our elected officials and elections.
Whether or not you believe that elections in this country were stolen, you must admit that Diebold's response to questions about the security of their machines and software have, to put it mildly, not been helpful.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
He delivered Ohio to Bush, as promised.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Or how about the CEO being close friends to Dick Cheney and a top republican supporter while his competitors supported both parties instead?
The bush administration typically punishes those who give to the democrats and rewards those who give to the republicans. Price is irrelivant and only the lobbying effort counts to get government contracts.
http://saveie6.com/
Oh, what a beautiful symbol it is though!
The downside as I see it is that there’s an excellent chance that in the long run Diebold will be depicted as a good company that was badly run for a while by one bad man, but once he left, returned to goodness. This would make his resignation, ironically enough, a setback for that vanishingly small minority of us who care deeply about the legitimacy of our nation’s electoral process.
But hey, I’d love to be wrong about this.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Huh? The ad says "Anti-Bush Gifts and Gear". That doesn't strike me as a very credible news site.
Yes, because if someone doesn't like Bush (like 2/3 of us now), then up is down, black is white, and the sky is every color except the one they say it is.
Raw Story is well known to be a source of very early, unripe, possibly wrong information. It's raw, like the Drudge Report. But I check it all the time (rather than give hits to Drudge) because whenever a big story erupts I see it there first. It's a good site for the latest scuttlebutt. In this particular case there have been plenty of confirming sources during the past few days.
You saw "anti-Bush gifts and gear" and assumed the site is not credible because of a bias. Credible opinions are not necessarily "balanced". It's gotten to the point where editors at major newspapers are deliberately skewing stories to make them more "balanced" to please people like you. If I see "balance" in a story anymore I have to assume I'm being lied to.
Even if he's indicted, tried by a jury, found guilty and sentenced to a PMTA prison, his alleged services to the current administration would probably buy him a "Get out of Jail Free" card in the form of a presidental pardon for all crimes.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
While I'm sure there'll be plenty of partisan blows over the Diebold machines, at the end of the day this is about a company that, at the very least, was thoroughly negligent in the machines that it put out. There are serious questions not just to be answered by Diebold, but by various officials who approved these machines.
It's rather sad that it is, to some extent, turning into a partisan battle, because one would hope that all people; politicians, voters and investigators, irregardless of their political leanings, would care more about democracy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
why the company's machines were even used in the first place. The minute he announced his very partisan feelings on the election, his machines should have been instantly pulled as suspect. It should have been up to Diebold to prove they were secure and accurate instead of up to the public to prove that they weren't.
I'll tolerate anything except intolerance.
The "e-voting" concept should be ... the computer prints the ballot and that paper ballot is your vote. That ballot lists ONLY the names you chose. You read that and drop it into the ballot box.
The computer counts the number of paper ballots it has printed for each candidate. This number can be released to the news agencies. But the real vote is the paper ballot.
At the end of the day, the names of the voters who used that machine are counted, the paper ballots are counted and both of those are compared to the total number of votes the machine says were cast. If they don't match, there is a problem.
In case of recount, the paper ballots are hand counted.
A random number of machines should also be checked against the ballots cast at them.
Multiple checks.
Just getting rid of the Diebold CEO does not fix the problem because the problem is the *system* rather than just one man. It is the system that allows one company to submit voting systems for use by the public with no oversight of their accuracy and integrity and it is the system that enables corrupt elected officials to allow Diebold to do as it pleased. The next Diebold CEO might be worse than the last one. Even worse, there will likely be other diebold-like companies springing forth to provide similar voting systems. Until the American public are able to throw off their cloak of indifference, timidity and cowardice and stand up to the Diebolds in their local jurisdictions, the system will remain broken.
to the "true believers" that remain among my fellow Americans, but firing Walden W. O'Dell will not automagically bring back integrity to the voting system here in the U.S. Most slashdotters are savvy enough to know that paperless voting using secret, proprietary code can be easily manipulated. We will not be safe from this type of fraud until paperless voting is outlawed in ALL states.
Also, many slashdotters have knowledge of the "Law of Large Numbers", and know that a well-designed exit poll should be accurate within its designed level of confidence. Large statistical "anomalies" between exit polling and "recorded votes" associated with the 2002 (Georgia, Minnesota), 2004 (Presidential election, many states) and 2005 (Ohio referendums) verge on the quasi-impossible, until you factor in deliberate fraud. Exit polls do not lie, and when the margin of error is exceeded time and again, all with identical bias, we can be sure that the system is being gamed. Exit polls, after all, are how the fairness of elections is assessed in those "corrupt, third-world" countries.
At least be comforted the "powers that be" that really control the country still feel the need to throw us dogs the "bones" of legitimacy. In the words of Frank Zappa,
"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see a brick wall at the back of the theater."