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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. Time for the tin foil hat? by DarkBlackFox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist, but given all the contraversy over Diebold's products, and if their board of directors is aware of of said contraversy, could this just be a feel good measure to divert public attention from the real issues? So the CEO is resigning due to "personal reasons", but is the company really going to change, or is it more of a "See? The Bad Guy(TM) is gone, you can trust us now!" type deal.

  2. It may already be too late by pHatidic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anyone who knows anything about business knows the cardinal rule: A people recruit A people, B people recruit C people. The CEO of Diebold was an F person and it's likely the whole company is now filled killers, thieves, and lawyers.

  3. So, move to Delaware. by Medievalist · · Score: 4, Interesting


    We've had electronic voting booths for ages (we had incredibly complex mechanical ones until the old clockmakers that built them for us all died or retired).

    But we still haven't had any election fraud attributable to the machines.

    Basically, it's because we have so few electors our votes aren't worth stealing. :(

    1. Re:So, move to Delaware. by pz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've often heard the arguments that we should go away from the current generation of mechanical voting machines because (a) they're old and breaking down and no one understands how to repair them, and (b) they're old and breaking down and spare parts aren't available. These arguments are quickly followed by statements of how much better electronic voting would be.

      I don't believe it for a second. I'm not sure who is trying to pull a fast one (perhaps Diebold is the answer in the US), but someone is planting FUD in no uncertain way.

      Please, seriously, someone make a cogent argument that for the millions of dollars that a contract to make electronic voting machines would cost, spare parts could not be designed and manufactured de novo for these mechanical ones. Someone tell me that we couldn't make it worthwhile to train people on how to fix them with those same millions of dollars. Just because a machine no longer has someone to tend it does not mean it becomes an untrustworthy impenetrable black box -- it means we have an opportunity to educate someone, perhaps many people, to a vital and important skill. Aftermarket spare parts are still being made for air-cooled VW Beetles, often to better specs than the originals. And we can't remanufacture our current mechanical voting machines which have worked for decades? Are voting machines somehow so much more complex than car engines? Someone's trying to trick us.

      --

      Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
  4. What is the US Secret Service doing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What is the US Secret Service doing?

    It is supposedly their responsibility to see that election fraud doesn't happen, yet the evidence of fraud is clear as a day.

    Why? Are americans happy with this?

    http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Diebold_insider__all eges_company_plagued_1206.html

    Shortly before the election, ten days to two weeks, we were told that the date in the machine was malfunctioning, the source recalled. So we were told 'Apply this patch in a big rush. Later, the Diebold insider learned that the patches were never certified by the state of Georgia, as required by law.

    Also, the clock inside the system was not fixed, said the insider. Its legendary how strange the outcome was; they ended up having the first Republican governor in who knows when and also strange outcomes in other races. I can say that the counties I worked in were heavily Democratic and elected a Republican. ...

  5. No, this is real and there's new test data out... by JimMarch(equalccw) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To quote the latest article on the Black Box Voting site (and then some background below that):

    ---
    http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1559 5.html?1134523376

    Due to security design issues and contractual non-performance, Leon County (Florida) supervisor of elections Ion Sancho told Black Box Voting that he will never use Diebold in an election again. He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from the county. He will issue a formal announcement to this effect shortly.

    Finnish security expert Harri Hursti proved that Diebold lied to Secretaries of State across the nation when Diebold claimed votes could not be changed on the memory card.

    A test election was run in Leon County today with a total of eight ballots - six ballots voted "no" on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thomson and by Harri Hursti voted "yes" indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked.

    At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A "zero report" was run indicating zero votes on the memory card. In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes.

    The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied "ender card" was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine.

    Correct results should have been:

    Yes:2 No:6

    However the results tape read:

    Yes:7 No:1

    The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into the GEMS central tabulator. The central tabulator is the "mothership" that pulls in all votes from voting machines. The results in the central tabulator read:

    Yes:7 No:1

    This proves that the votes themselves were changed in a one-step process that would not be detected in any normal canvassing procedure - using only a credit-card sized memory card.

    Diebold Elections Systems head of research and development Pat Green specifically told the Cuyahoga County board of elections that votes could not be changed on the memory card.

    According to Public Records responses obtained by Black Box Voting in response to our requests shows that Diebold promulgated this misrepresentation to as many as 800 state and local elections officials.

    In other news, according to Bradblog a stockholder suit was filed today against Diebold by the law offices of Scott and Scott:

    http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002153.htm

    Permission to reprint granted with link to http://blackboxvoting.org/
    ---

    Jim again. Let me fill you in on the background.

    Six months ago Leon County elections administrator Ion Sancho asked us (Black Box Voting) to "test hack" his Diebold optical scan system. We brought Finnish security expert Harri Hursti and Dr. Hugh Thomson from Florida along.

    Dr. Thomson proved that the central tabulator's database (in MS-Access of all things) can be hacked without a retail copy of MS-Access present. He used Visual Basic to control the MS Jet database engine directly, using very small script files...small enough to be typed in via MS-Windows Notepad at the tabulator console. We already knew the MS-Access database was tamper-friendly but this was real-world proof that you didn't need to bring in and load a copy of Access to tamper. The same things can almost certainly be done in Java and probably other ways as well.

    Harri Hursti pulled off something new.

    The report co-written with Bev Harris proved it's possible to doctor the poll tapes. These are the end-of-day printouts showing the number of votes for each candidate or issue taken in on that machine. It's basically