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Diebold to Withdraw from E-Voting?
ICA writes "It appears after years of criticism, Diebold may be ready to withdraw from electronic voting entirely. The company is concerned that this relatively small and marginally profitable unit is hurting the company's overall image."
de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
What, Did the republicans find an other way to fix the elections?
Help! I've fallen in a karma hole and I can't get up!
"It appears after years of criticism, Microsoft may be ready to withdraw from the operating systems market entirely. The company is concerned that this relatively small and marginally profitable unit is hurting the company's overall image."
"It appears after years of criticism, Diebold may be ready to withdraw from electronic voting entirely. The company is concerned that this relatively small and marginally profitable unit is hurting the company's overall image."
Good. What other voting machines need to go next?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Whenever I called for technical support they would always say, "You know your vote doesn't count anyway."
The above comment was intended for amusement purposes only and in no way reflects true events.
Instead of just letting a company have their way with electronic voting, they really should have done research into the best voting method. I think on Slashdot we've reached a general consensus that there should at least be a verifyable paper trail that each voter can see their votes cast on paper. This would help in case of machine failure, or in case of voter fraud committed by the programmer. I'm no expert on electronic voting, but it doesn't take an expert to see there are flaws with the current electronic voting.
God spoke to me.
Unfortunately for Diebold, I'm not of the opinion that if they can't properly make a secure voting machine, what is to say that they can make a secure ATM? Sure, they may be two completely different divisions within the same company but considering how much the top management has avoided doing the right thing to fix their voting machines, I doubt the ATM division would be much different.
That evoting will be totally eliminated. We need to back to paper and pencil ballots.
Diebold doesn't seem to have the will to improve its offering, or even to take an honest look at its shortcomings. It's hard to see how others couldn't do a lot better.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
the damage is already done.... bastards.
I wouldn't blame them. They tried to make something cheap and simple to use like the current systems with easy interactivity. But costs with anything related to the security of a vote will always be high. The only way I see that we could really secure every vote is to send out worm drive usb sticks for voters to just walk up and plug into thier voting office. This way once the vote is entered it cannot be changed. Only read or erased. This would also allow people to vote in the safety of thier own homes with access to far more research at the same time with the power of the internet. This would also make recounts easier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_mortuis_nil_nisi_b onum
~ roscivs
Run Diebold Run! Dissolve the division and destroy the paper-trail before the Dems figure out what the real story was for the past couple elections!
"The company is concerned that this relatively small and marginally profitable unit is hurting the company's overall image."
That's absurd. Diebold's voting machines have destroyed the company's image completely, in my opinion. Seriously, if you know something about the history and you have a little technical knowledge, would you ever buy anything from Diebold?
DEADbold.
--
My summary of U.S. gov corruption. Where's your's?
If it is true that Diebold is looking to dump this business unit (which hasn't been confirmed or denied - Diebold has only said that an announcement would come sometime), what then happens to all the machines (100,000+, i think)? Surely they, or whoever purchases the business unit, is still on the hook for support, updates, and whatever flak comes when the things don't work right. Those machines aren't going to simply vanish or instantly become secure and reliable. Some improvements can be made by completely changing the firmware, but a great deal of the criticism behind the voting machines was their lack of physical security and lack of a physical paper trail. Those are problems that can't be fixed without drastically altering the hardware itself. What company out there would want to buy this business unit and take that challenge on?
Turn States Evidence and toss anyone who might be involved with voter fraud to the wolves.
If you don't have anyone, just fake it....the masses need the blood-circus to go with the bread.
....so by proving they -can't- fix their problems, they'll somehow convince the world that their -other- business (ATMs) are somehow reliable and secure?
Sure lack of profitability != bad product always, but I'm not sure how dumping their problem child is going to fix the problem now.
Another option for Diebold might be to fix the problems: print a paper confirmation, make motherboard access a little harder than a luggage lock. We don't ask for much.
With this munificent felon?
Pariotically yours,
Kilgore Trout
Hey, Diebold did their job and delivered Ohio.
Mission Accomplished.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
According to quoted experts, Diebold might dump its poorly-rated electronic voting division. Or it might not.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Lucky for us they did get into e-voting, and it has hurt their reputation. If they didn't, we wouldn't have been as aware that if security was their ass, they wouldn't be able to find it with both hands tied behind their back! Their reputation needed to be brought down.
"The company is concerned that this relatively small and marginally profitable unit is hurting the company's overall image" Another great company down the tubes, what's next Enron is fudging the books? You critics are killing us all!
Is it possible to tarnish this company's image any further?
Those vile Liberals made Baby Jesus cry...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
51% against. 53% for George Bush. Case closed.
Oh really? I guess you've sworn off ATM's? Yeah... I didn't think so.
ATMs are even more closed than Voting Machines. All a company has to do is convince the bank that their product is secure and there is no one else to answer to.
Simple banker logic proving that ATMs are still secure -
Since:
Department produces insecure product = Department closed by company.
Therefore:
Department not closed by company = department produces secure product.
QED.
"If the ATMs were as screwed as our voting machines, we's fuck those guys off too!"
Unfortunately, it's rather difficult to choose what brand ATM you use. However, it's certainly possible to complain to your bank or credit union about their choice of Diebold ATMs, and it's also certainly possible that the people at banks/CUs who decide which ATM vendor to purchase from may decide against Diebold based on all the negative publicity.
My prediction: Donald Rumsfeld, possibly through a twisty maze of companies, all alike, will buy it up, and hire the same or worse neocon(vict)s to run it. Business as usual, just renamed as FairCountCo or the like. No money will be spent on fixes or even engineering, but a boatload of money will ago to newspaper editorial writers in redstate markets (Toledo, Lincoln, Butte, Bugtussle, etc.) And Jeb Bush will come surprisingly close to defeat, but will pull off a "victory" due to the surprise results from Southern Illinois. Rgds, Jethro T. Cornhole Cynic-at-large
.nosig
...where is the "yay" tag?
Horseshit, hole-ridden garbage machines foisted off on taxpayers like me, either deliberately, or through plain old incompetence, all to the end of giant profits for unabashedly partisan executives? Say it ain't so!
Maybe now the invisible hand that has slapped Diebold will help bring forth e-voting that sucks measurably less. I'm pretty sure it can be done. Just need a few people with modest amounts of both skill AND ethics.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
Maybe I'm a conspiracy theorist, I don't know, maybe I've been in the computer business too long.
Diebold should have been able to make an e-voting system. NO bank would accept the "really, really, it works" hand waving from Diebold with regards to the e-voting. All ATM machines, teller machines, and machines that handle monetary transactions somewhere along the line, produce at least one verifiable paper record of credit and debit for each party in the transaction and agents involved. To do less with voting seems completely absurd. For Diebold to even suggest a system without proper accountability makes absolutely no sense what so ever. They really do understand security and record keeping, what the hell happened with e-voting? As a corporation, e-voting should have been a slam dunk for them.
Ineptitude at such a large corporation is not unheard of, but surely someone would have said something, right? When the president of Diebold said he would do what ever he could to make sure G.W. Bush gets re-elected, it was an event that colored my "benefit of the doubt" stance on Diebold.
I honestly believe that G.W. Bush and company helped fix the election and Diebold was just one of the methods. It only takes slight tampering to sway a consensus or another. When the polling authority in ohio opened ballot boxes to "pre-screen" the supposedly "random" selection in order to avoid a full recount, one has to wonder. In 2000 it was Florida, in 2004 it was Ohio, regardless the outcome is the same.
I think in the U.S.A. we have to ensure our own democracy before we try to bring democracy elsewhere by force.
Just my $0.02
P.S. This is not a flame post, just the words of a sad and disillusioned patriotic American.
But seriously, I'm not afraid of electronic voting. Online voting would be a disaster.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
You know that the technologies, hardware and software behind Diebold's systems were not inexpensive. So it's highly unlikely that they will just drop out of this. What will happen instead is that their work will be sold to the highest bidder. And that company will become the new Diebold with the main difference being that this new company will likely have e-voting as their main focus. Expect to hear about a new "better" voting machine before the next presidential elections. If they play their cards right, they'll spin it to make it seem like they are totally new and have better reliability than Diebold did. Then the same old games will be played and we'll have another presidential election tarnished by uncertainty about the results. They play this game enough times and this will seem "normal". Those voters who are happy with the results will not question the results. Those who are unhappy will also stop questioning as the other side will beat them into submission by saying, "sour grapes" enough times. And all will be well for those with the money to buy votes.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
These will always be low bidder projects with thin margins and lousy propects. Look how well the mechanical voting machine company did.
Seriously, you can't make money on something which is (a) an expense which cannot garner any revenue and (b) which is used extremely infrequently.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Getting in the middle of a left-wing conspiracy was the problem.
1) Republicans are actively trying to tamper with the votes
2) They are trying to tamper with electronic votes
3) Somebody at Diebold was friendly to Republicans
That was the problem for them. Yes, this is flamebait. But that doesn't make it wrong.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
(and I searched through the comments, FYI :) - GOOD RIDDANCE!
What we need is voting solutions like this:
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/our_solution
or this:
http://punchscan.org/faq.php
or some combination of the above two.
Let's make this country the #1 democracy in the world all over again. Let everyone know that feasible voting solutions exist in the here and now and are solved with current technology!
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
You can't "elect" W more than twice, so their work here is done.
it would be bad if their other overtly secure products (*cough* whitelabel ATMs *cough*) were found to be just as riddle with insecurities...
DIE DIEBOLD DIE
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Bank: End-user receipts are allowed and in fact welcomed. When you make a transaction it spits out a little piece of paper that shows your balance and/or banking history
Voting Machine: End user is not to receive a paper receipt, mainly on the basis that doing so could further vote-buying/pressuring/forcing/etc (i.e. a given group threatening dire consequences if voted Y doesn't come out with a slip saying he/she voted for "X")
and open source it,
then perhaps confidence in e-voting can be restored.
Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims
The Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims enables the simulated people in your virtual dollhouse to vote!
It's an interactive "get out the vote" public service message, in the form of a free downloadable Sims object.
This Sims object is an electronic voting machine that lets your Sims vote between four candidates: Kerry, Bush, Nader and Badnarik.
I've included informative text in this Sims object, which it displays in illustrated dialogs to educate players about electronic voting machines.
A major side-show is the "Monkey" item on the pie menu, which activates all kinds of cool easter eggs, and displays lots of in-game information and news about electronic voting machines.
Please give this Dumbold Voting Machine a good pounding on, and tell me if you have any problems (besides the usual problems endemic to electronic voting machines, which I've programmed into this Sims object on purpose).
At first look, it appears to be a fully functional voting machine. But it actually has a lot of fatal bugs and hidden features, just like real electronic voting machines!
Highlights of Cheats, Bugs and Easter Eggs (Illustrations are here)
The Dumbold Voting Machine is programmed with cheats, bugs and easter eggs, which you can discover and read about by playing around with it. It demonstrates and simulates some alarming problems with real world electronic voting machines, with many surprising effects and subtle interactions:
Baxter the Chimpanzee Erases the Voting Log. When you put the voting machine into debug mode and clear the votes, you will see a dialog with the hillarious picture and story of Baxter the Chimpanzee. In your web browser, you can watch the funny monkey movie showing Baxter erasing the voting log! Now your Sims can monkey around with the electronic Dumbold Voting Machines, go bananas hacking the system, fling poo and corrupt the election results just like the pros!
Vote or Die! P. Diddy, lately a.k.a. Citizen Combs, says: "'You all are the X-factor, the wild card," Combs said. "`History is being made here. Our revolution has begun." "Young voters in this country are throwing away their power to have a say about education, healthcare, and any issue that affects them." Combs explains. "These things affect your life, so - Vote or Die!" (If you select Vote, you live. If you select Die, you either get electrocuted, or burst into flames, then you die.)
You punched out the screen! Hey!!! You're supposed to touch the screen, not punch it! Next time, please don't take out your frustration with the lousy choice of candidates by punching the screen. That's not the way to get your vote counted. (Your Sim breaks the voting machine screen. You can repair it if you're skilled enough, but you might want to keep a handyman on call during the election!)
Osama Bin Laden Scares the Piss Out of You!!! Osama Bin Laden wants to scare you into voting for George W Bush, because Bin Laden is grateful to Bush for outsourcing the job of hunting him down to Osama's good friends, the Afghan warlords. Bush's policies have strengthened Bin Laden's cause, and George W Bush says he's not worried about Osama Bin Laden. Bush and Bin Laden both want you to vote in response to your of fears, not in pursuit of your hopes. "Americans all know that Osama Bin Laden doesn't pick our president. The Supreme Court does." -Bill Maher (Your Sim empties their bladder, pisses their pants, and then runs away screaming!)
Accidentally Voting for Pat Buchanan. When you select one of the four official candidates, sometimes it "accidentally" pops up an illustrated dialog asking for confirmation that you want to vote for Pat Buchanan! If you foolishly select "Yes", the voting machine breaks!
News about Black Box Voting.
News about CalTech-MIT/Voting Technology Project.
News about Diebold
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
What we really need to do electronic voting is secure tallying. We need a public, verifiable way of checking that the tallies are legitimate. We also need to make sure that they are also anonymous.
Any proposed method of verifying your electronic vote, whether it's a paper receipt, a bar code, or a website that you can check later on, is susceptible to being left out of the tally. So what if the website reports that it has correctly recorded your vote? You have no way of knowing whether your verified vote is counted in the official tally. Even if you see a vote exactly like yours in the official tally, it may or may not belong to you. With anonymous voting, several people might be looking at a single ballot, all thinking it was the one that they cast.
I'm trying to imagine a system where we can all have verified votes and make sure that they are affecting the official tally, but still maintain anonymity in the vote. Voting is basically a system where each voter can affect the outcome of the election by exactly one vote, for each office and issue. Perhaps a system where each voter adds encrypted strings of their vote to the official tally. Each voter can decrypt the official tally string and see that their vote has affect the tally. At the end of the election the last voter turns their decryption string to the officials, and the tallies are decrypted.
As you can tell, I'm not a mathematician nor a computer scientist. Please feel free to chime in and criticize or offer new ideas.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
tagged abouttime
Personally, I see no other purpose in the design of Diebold voting systems other than to facilitate fraud. Seriously, there just aren't any really good protections built into the whole device.
Now, that it appears very likely that in 2008, Democrats will control both houses of congress and the presidency,I can understand why the folks at Diebold are worried about things like future investigations of their business. I really can believe it might make business sense for the Diebold management to dump their voting machines business at a loss-and let somebody else hold that hot potatoe. I would also expect some substantial managerial turnover is in order too.
Now, the problem is that Diebold is just the most visible of several corrupt companies here. I wouldn't forget about ES&S--which is another major player in the market-and which has similar problems.
According to Black Box Voting (http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/173 05.html?1138394704) the company that originally designed the Diebold machines was founded by five convicted felons. Four were perpetrators of sophisticated fraud and the fifth was a drug-dealer prison buddy of one of the fraudsters.
The criminal records of these people would make them ineligible to carry bedpans in Maryland nursing homes, but of course there are no criminal record checks for people who design and maintain voting machines.
The criminal backgrounds of Global's original founders gives reason to suspect that the widespread security vulnerabilities of the machines were not due to mere incompetence but might have been connected to some kind of nefarious scheme concocted by their criminal minds.
Accordingly, let me suggest that a proper purchaser for Diebold Election Systems might be some international criminal syndicate, for example the Russian Mafia, the drug cartels, or perhaps some criminal group fronting for terrorists. That would, in a sense, return the machines to people with the backgrounds of the founders of the original developer.
The Russian Mafia could make voting systems a subsidiary of their organization that reportedly is responsible for all the recent spam related to pump-and-dump penny stock schemes. They certainly have sophisticated computer capability behind those schemes. They could auction election victories just like they now reportedly auction cybercrime facilities and exploits.
Just some thoughts.
no support, no parts, just give back the 800 number and get the (f) out.
take the losses and teach a lesson: building a division to irregularly "count" votes without safeguards, and having your CEO pushing a candidate who was widely seen as becoming president through a vote steal is truly irresponsible.
I will appropriate somebody else's sig for emphasis... approximate quotes... "the four boxes of freedom... soap, ballot, jury, and ammo." diebold election systems appears hell-bent on skipping the jury box. they must die.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Translation:
We got what we wanted from the unit, a Bush presidency and business friendly congress. Now that Bush is over and the congress has gone over to the Dems and there is no new candidate on the horizon that is as business friendly as we would like, then there is not much point in continuing the effort.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
[Disclaimer, I live and work down the road from the Diebold corp offices and have family that work there.]
/. crowd, but try getting the facts straight before throttling the company and writing it off as a total incompetent.
t ems
I know it's asking a lot from the
Diebold didn't make the voting machines, it purchased the company that did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold_Election_Sys
For those too lazy to click the link:
"Diebold Election Systems is currently run by Bob Urosevich [1] who has worked in the election systems industry since 1976. In 1979, Mr. Urosevich founded American Information Systems. He served as the President of AIS now known as Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) from 1979 through 1992. Bob's brother, Todd Urosevich, is Vice President, Aftermarket Sales with ES&S, DES's chief competitor. In 1995, Bob Urosevich started I-Mark Systems, whose product was a touch screen voting system utilizing a smart card and biometric encryption authorization technology. Global Election Systems, Inc. (GES) acquired I-Mark in 1997, and on July 31, 2000 Mr. Urosevich was promoted from Vice President of Sales and Marketing and New Business Development to President and Chief Operating Officer. On January 22, 2002, Diebold announced the acquisition of GES, then a manufacturer and supplier of electronic voting terminals and solutions. The total purchase price, in stock and cash, was $24.7 million. Global Election Systems subsequently changed its name to Diebold Election Systems, Inc."
Diebold is actually well-respected and admired in this area. Diebold election systems are based in Texas whereas the financial systems are here in NE Ohio. I interviewed there for an SE position a couple of years ago, toured their ATM lab, and spent some quality time with some of their software engineers. They seemed to have a very competent operation and I enjoyed the interview. (I ended up taking a different job with another large international corp for other $elfi$h reason$ (I have a family to feed)) I heard the same moaning from the employees I met that I hear from family members who work there - something similar to "those stupid voting machines make us look bad." I have yet to meet an employee, management or otherwise, who has anything good to say about the elections systems division.
Wally O'Dell is largely (if not solely) responsible for the elections systems debacle. It's no secret that he lead the company right into this political mess at the expense of the company's and his own reputations.
Don't torpedo the whole company just because the former CEO bungled a bad deal with a flawed political agenda. It'll eventually work out in the wash, then you can cast aspersions on a new company TBA.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
the only responsible ballot is paper, guarded, and kept under lock until all challenges are met.
whether it is counted by optical scanner or a dreary-eyed bunch of formerly high-minded citizens at 5 am is optional.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I've sworn off Diebold ones, it's not even very difficult to do. I've not seen any of the in-store debit card things made by Diebold around here and I can go into any store that has those and buy a small item and get cash back quite simply. I end up paying less fees this way as well (since my bank charges me fees for using even their own ATMs).
With all the negative press surrounding electronic voting, I wonder if this signals a jump back to the standard paper or mechanical voting machines. Any election can be fixed, but I've always felt electronic voting isn't quite ready yet. Given that most people wouldn't understand how an electronic voting machine could produce wrong or fraudulent results, it's probably not the best thing to introduce right now. People understand the idea of improperly marked paper ballots or an election official tampering with the older mechanical tabulators. People don't fully grasp the idea of a group of hackers, whether for fun or profit, gaining access to or changing vote results.
I say we should wait until computer security really is nailed down. Not just because Symantec or other vendors say we're secure, but because it's actually so. Listening to security vendors do presentations at work to the executives is a painful exercise. The common theme is "buy this box, and you're 100% secure from these threats." I think it's going to take a lot of convincing (and a few examples) to change people's thoughts on this.
What I find amusing, is how much success we had using electronic voting machines here at Brazil... we have been using these for almost 10 years now. The last presidential election was almost entirely conducted using these machines... and only a few on the entire country had to be replaced due failure.
Of course there are some issues to be sorted, but overall it was a huge improvement over the old paper-based system.
So, why did Brazil succeed where the USA failed?
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
-GiH
Seriously, if you know something about the history and you have a little technical knowledge, would you ever buy anything from Diebold?
They make good safes. That was their original business.
-GiH
boohoo, we can't run an electable candidate. boohoo. wait till 2008 when you have the same problems, suckers.
"Let's make this country the #1 democracy in the world all over again. Let everyone know that feasible voting solutions exist in the here and now and are solved with current technology!"
What? And waste all that money that was invested in rigging the system? It's a capitalist dream investment - pay enough and you get to write the laws that will provide a very juicy return on investment.
Face it - you're as much a democracy as the UK (i.e. not at all). And even the UK is only slowly starting to admit that publicly.
Insert
AKA: The Infocalypse!
Best Slashdot Co
"The company has already achieved its goals of delivering Ohio to the Republican Party as their founder promised, and no longer needs to be involved in electronic voting."
There, fixed that for you.
It of course is a reasonable reason given; it's definitely made me very aware that every time I use an ATM with the Diebold logo, I'm using a probably-insecure device. That's why the reason is so plausible.
I did find portions of the article interesting, such as this bit:
But in an annual report filed last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Diebold's discussion of its election systems business pointed out various ongoing concerns. Diebold acknowledged that complaints about its voting products and services have hurt relations with government election officials.
Diebold indicated it still is "vulnerable to these types of challenges because the electronic elections systems industry is emerging." The report also mentioned inconsistency in the way state and local governments are adapting to federal requirements for upgrades in voting technology.
This is probably true. If electronic voting had been in place for decades, perhaps no one would have even noticed that this horribly insecure-by-design system was so full of holes. So while Diebold complains about how unfair the system is, they highlight an area of concern - complacency.
Also interesting is this tidbit which I somehow missed at the beginning of this particular storm:
Voting machine makers such as Diebold; Election Systems & Software, of Omaha, Neb.; Sequoia Voting Systems, of Oakland, Calif., and Hart InterCivic, of Austin, Texas have had the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 as a sales catalyst. HAVA, with $3.9 billion of funding, urged the nation to move past punch card voting and hanging chads that delayed the conclusion of the 2000 presidential election.
Here is the Help America Vote Act (or at least a link to a federal page about the same.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Before this whole e-voting fiasco, I hadn't heard much about Diebold at all. I used ATMs for years without really caring about who built the damn things any more than I would care about which company made the parking meter outside the bank or the thumbtacks on their bulletin board. I didn't work in any industry that was tied strongly enough to whatever Diebold did to care.
Nowadays, the only mental image I have of Diebold nowadays is the complete mess of things they have made, as reported by concerned communities such as this one. I've double-checked the ATMs I've used since then, eschewing the Diebold ones.
In my case, the e-voting debacle didn't destroy my personal image of the company at all. It created it.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Whenever I called for technical support they would always say, "You know your vote doesn't count anyway."
The above comment was intended for amusement purposes only and in no way reflects true events.
Amusement? Nothing amuses me more than truth, as in "you couldn't make up this stuff."
Consider when Diebold CEO, Walden O'Dell wrote in a fund raising letter that he was committed "to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President." I don't bloody understand how much more the company's image could be tarnished.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
because martial law will be declared and elections suspended starting next year. Their stock value would tumble if they don't get out now.
(p.s.: You hit that one out of the park, Mr. Rodriguez. I wish I had mod points...)
Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr. Raymond Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddmore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - MASS HYSTERIA!
Mayor: Enough! I get the point!
I'd like to agree with you, but that wouldn't explain why one of the banks I regularly deal with just upgraded to Diebold ATMs.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Please, please, please, please let Diebold try to sell the unit to Dubai.
When I called up about issues with their machines, they said, that "Do not worry. We guarantee that you will always have the right vote".
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Job's done (as promised), why not kill it off.
(+-) 3 to 6 percent skew of total units, no paper trail.
Tougher to do a job when so many people are looking over your shoulder.
~hylas
Prior to 2002, Diebold did not produce any electronic voting machines. In that year they acquired Global Election Systems, which became their voting machine division. GES had always produced garbage, and it is no suprise that they continued to do so under new ownership. The incompetance of that division shouldn'd reflect onto the abilities of the engineers in other divisions, although it does certainly say something about the management of the company as a whole.
As a side note, the reason that Diebold acquired GES in 2002 was because of the expected boom in voting machines sales as a result of the 2001 Help America Vote Act. This act, which was a response to the hanging-chad problems in the 2000 election set forth requirements concering voters with disabilities, which drove many states to buy electronic voting machines as they seemed the easiest way to statisfy the requirements. So next time someone tells you that the federal government cannot pass any laws about electronic voting, remind them that it was federal law that led the situation to begin with.
Probably because they know no matter what happens, they can't help Bush win.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
Doesn't mean that the problems will go away. They will probably sell the unit to another company, trying to salvage what they can. And the crappy machines will continue to be used.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
They made stupid decisions and I hope it has hurt/hurts/will hurt them a lot.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Well, maybe my history professor will accept that latin phrase instead of a report, right?
How many people are going to complain about the brand of atm that their bank is using though? I'm pretty sure that there could be excellent proof that they ran on puppies and most people would just keep on using them.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
So, did they vote on this at a board meeting? ANd if so, did they use the good old raising the hands method and counting? We should do this for national elections from now on.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
Now that there's no more "elect George Bush and his Republican minions" industry, why would they stay in the business?
--
make install -not war
They managed to rig 2 elections, they knew they couldn't get away with it forever, so time to retire. Mission accomplished.
I see it as an opportunity. Voting is not something we should be outsourcing. I'd like to see the government bring the development in house completely. Buy Diebold's e-voting division, and open the entire system up to audit by whomever chooses to audit it. Leaving an election up to a (potentially partisan) third party is an awfully bad idea in my opinion.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
Okay, say the next company comes along with a very good system.
It shows Republicans winning by ever bigger majorities.
Placing doubt on the doubt.
You're right. I'm just hoping the people running the banks and choosing the ATM vendors will decide against Diebold in the future because of their newfound reputation. If I were in their place, I wouldn't want to choose Diebold, simply because they've demonstrated themselves to be incompetent when it comes to security with these voting machines, and for a bank, security is paramount for continued business operation.
I have. Haven't used an ATM in about 6 or 7 years. Had nothing to do with Diebold or any spiteful decision for that matter, they simply aren't all that relevant if you don't need to pay for things with cash a lot.
They've made so many obviously crappy products, bodged workarounds and security leaks, I'm glad to see them go because I don't want to trust their equipment with my vote.
I just hope they fire all the staff that produced the voting systems instead of relocate them to their ATM products where they can do more harm as they clearly don't have a clue.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Or don't you care if elections are literally stolen?
The 2004 presidential elections had anomalies THAT WERE OUTSIDE THE POSSIBLE MARGIN OF ERROR FOR EXIT POLLS.
Do you understand what that means? It means that the results WERE rigged. This country was forced into a war of choice by a president that was never legitimately elected and there are hundreds of thousands of people who are dead because of it.
This goes way beyond politics into the realm of treason. Those responsible for subverting our election process should be hanged until dead. Every last one of them.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Thank-you! You hit the nail right on the head.
-FL
Thanks you.
The machine shouldn't put the ballot in a sequentially sorted hopper, it should spit it out the front, like, I don't know, an ATM maybe? The voter checks it to make sure it's right, then on the way out drops it in a ballot box. Wouldn't be hard to work out a system with RFID or barcodes to ensure that voters don't leave the poll with their ballots.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Seriously.
All it would take is another well-timed 9-11, or a total market collapse, or some other disaster at the right time, and I can easily see Bush declaring himself Emperor for Life.
Either that, or the next guy will be even worse. "The Prezinator" anyone?
Ugh. In in world where the RIAA has guys with flak jackets and machine guns, any crazy thing can happen.
-FL
Flamebait? No. Coincidence? Maybe. If you can't mod appropriately, then post a reply.
How could the voting machines hurt their image? Are you telling me they do something *other* than help people subvert democracy?
I dont see why someone wouldnt just build an embedded open-source solution, wouldnt be that difficult to develop a system that runs off a microcontroller like a dsPIC, with a touch screen, printer, barcode scanner and some speech synthesis (for the blind), could be written in C++, and the hardware would be open source as well.
It won't matter - Andersons Consulting survived destruction of their image by a mere change of name to Accenture - Diebold still has some way to go.
Diebold is just remarketing bad software.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has both Diebold and NCR ATMs. If I come across a Diebold one when I'm low on money I decide how low I really am.
As an aside, one thing I'm noticing with modern ATMs is that the viewable angle is really wide. This is a bad thing. They should put in cheaper LCD panels or consider installing a privacy filter.
provided of course, that he is really dead. - Voltaire.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Speaking as an outsider (although I lived in the US a decade ago) I can definitely say that Bush will leave happily at the end of his term. Partly because he's too much of an idiot for even his masters to stomach (or control), but mostly because a majority of the US still believes they live in a democracy, and the people in charge are going to milk that as long as they can. It just makes good financial sense--why impose martial law when you can just keep stealing elections and get grudging support from the populace? (i.e. "Well he's an idiot, but our country voted him in so I guess we have to agree with him.")
The Democrats will likely win the next election as long as they have enough brains to put Hilary in, although the Republicans might be able to play the 'female president uncertainty' card and bring the totals close enough to rig another one. I doubt that'll happen though, because they can give up four years of officially calling the shots, in order to let the Democrats take the heat for the unholy mess the country is in now, and then step in for three consecutive terms. After that, (and maybe a fourth one--hard to say), then if there's anything left to seize control of, they'll do it--martial law will be VOTED on, and declared.
That is, of course, unless the rest of the world manages to extricate themselves and let the US collapse without taking everyone else down with them. At that point, who knows what'll happen?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
"Don't you care that Diebold's trying to destroy all mankind? Huh?"
"But they're so BAD at it."
(With apologies to Invader Zim.)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I'm from Ohio, and I have no respect for Diebold, and probably never will again.
Their dishonest demos and insecure, buggy, unverifiable voting system showed their complete lack of respect for America's representative democracy. At the very least they are unpatriotic. Whether they rigged the presidential election or not, they are criminals.
However, the only problem is that the world has a way lately of throwing in the unexpected.
I can't help but think that the Middle East melting down is going to cause some new dynamics. Do the Christian Apocalypse Occultists pushing for this crazy war have a plan of action for when all the people with brown skin are finally dead? What happens when you throw an apocalypse and Jesus doesn't come? Or worse, what happens when somebody shows up claiming to be Jesus? And how does this painfully boring build-up to, "Life On Mars" figure into it all. And then there's the comets and ice age stuff.
All of which sounds very weird, I realize, but if somebody had told me fifteen years ago that the entire national economy would be shaken to its foundation by a chain store called, 'Wal-Mart', that the presidency would be successfully stolen by rigged electronic voting machines, that the West was going to launch a ludicrously named, "War on Terror" because of a Bruce-Willis production of planes-into-sky-scrapers, that the Israelis would turn the Gaza Strip into a concentration camp without the world batting an eyelash, that the record labels would start hiring SWAT teams to enforce copyright while artists STILL get ripped off, and that the gulf stream would stop flowing, I'd have said, "Yeah, but only if the writers happened to be stoned at the scripting session."
It's all a little too Neal Stephenson for me. The world seems very fake and over the top these days, but surprisingly, I'm actually having a hard time being astonished when each successive bit of surreal fever dream weirdness parades onto the stage. I think it's important to be able to look at insane stuff and recognize it as such. Otherwise, it's the same as being asleep at the circus.
And hey, you'd miss out on the cotton candy.
-FL
I didn't know Diebold did anything *other* than electronic voting.
/. too much.)
(I read
alas, how we shall miss thee, how we shall lament thee not
Oops! Too late, guys. Your venture into electronic voting has probably sullied your reputation in most other areas of business that you are involved in. I know I'll never feel too comfortable using a Diebold ATM again.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
In my original post, I said this, "Seriously, if you know something about the history and you have a little technical knowledge, would you ever buy anything from Diebold?"
I said nothing about not using Diebold ATMs. The liability is the banks', not the users'. The only point is that anyone knowing the history and having technical knowledge would try to find some other supplier.
Shell Game.
blah, blah, blah...
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Diebold's slogan is "We never rest."
Compare to the popular phrase: "There is no rest for the wicked."
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/257500.html
Where is my free pass to fail without accountability? Remember, I am interested in making money.
A simple google search and:
0 2/1440234
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/
You can find a link to the video on that page. Happy now?
Pretty lazy Dude.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!