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Diebold Sues Massachusetts for "Wrongful Purchase"
elBart0 writes "Diebold has decided to sue the commonwealth of Massachusetts for choosing a competitor to provide voting machines for the disabled. Diebold wants to force the state to stop using the machines immediately, despite the upcoming municipal elections in many towns. The commonwealth chose the competitor based on an open process that included disabled groups. Diebold executives appeared confused when encountering election officials who made an intelligent choice."
In Soviet Massachusetts, Diebold sues YOU!
Sorry, I cound't stop myself.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I know nothing will motivate me to use a company's products like having them SUE my ass. Is Diebold kidding or something, here? I want to see them get smacked down, and HARD.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Although I don't support Diebold either, please keep personal opinion out of the summaries. Quotes like "diebold executives appeared confused when encountering election officials who made an intelligent choice" don't belong in objective news reporting.
This message printed on 100% post-consumer recycled electrons.
It's as if I'm reading the Onion when I read that article.
I'm speechless.
They had a flashing LED when a vote was cast. This caused Boston police to shut the city down while the bomb squad went to each polling place to blow up the machines.
It's about time some benevolent large corporation stood up to their customers. Customers left to their own decisions will frequently buy the wrong products. The manufacturer obviously knows far more about their product than the customer, so they are the only ones in a position to make a sensible decision about what other people should use.
Clearly the best product for any situation is the one that the biggest company is pushing. It's not like companies get to be big in the first place by overcharging for their products and using the courts to keep competition down.
but wasn't one of Diebold's main selling points on using computerized voting over paper ballots that computerized voting systems help disabled people vote?(I do believe at some point they invoked the Americans with Disabilities act as a rationale for deploying these systems). So now disabled people actually help pick out a system and Diebold sues? (I guess according to Diebold disabled people aren't able enough to choose a system wisely :P)
Words fail.
Monstar L
Area man Greg Norton was sued by multinational corporation PepsiCO for purchasing a competing product, Coca-Cola. Said attorney Mark Wiseguy, "We compete against Coke around the country all the time". "Based on the criteria set out by Mr. Norton, we had a fair degree of confidence we'd come out on top, and nothing we heard during the process dissuaded us of that confidence." Greg Norton is said to have replied, "Dude, where's my country?"
Now, I wonder how many places around the country will start deciding not to give Diebold a shot at all by not inviting the company to showcase its products, to avoid the chance of getting sued. Good job Diebold! (And you would think that all the bad news the last years was justification enough not to pick Diebold.)
In other news, a Toyota dealer is suing a man who bought a Honda, because "based on the criteria set out by the purchaser, we had a fair degree of confidence we'd come out on top, and nothing we heard during the process dissuaded us of that confidence." Actually, Toyoto is a decent manufacturer, make it a Yugo dealer.
They voted for the diebold machine, but they cast that vote *on* a diebold machine.
It's easy to see how things got mixed up from there...
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
There isn't one. To save others the trouble, here's the closest thing to a reason they give:
I'm a little surprised they think they can sue just based on a gut feeling and expect to get away with it, but then again, it is Diebold. They seem to get away with just about anything.
I'd love it if someone would do this in every state where someone agreed to buy Diebold voting machines.
Wrong actor, right technique. Based on security issues alone, we know Diebold is always the wrong choice. Just by a knee jerk methodology, we could keep the machines out of people's hands for another few months each time. It would generate some press, if nothing else.
LBJ wanted his opponent accused of having sex with barnyard animals. It wasn't that he thought the charge would stick -- he wanted people to hear the candidate deny it. In this case, the response will be "well, your software is a joke -- completely insecure." We'll get to hear Diebold deny the charge. Any suit brought to force reopening analysis before purchase of Diebold's stuff would mean that, once again, they'd have to say "No, our software isn't laughably insecure. No the fact the our code showed up on the Internet isn't a problem. No, our keys are not from a hotel minibar and orderable over the Internet, and no, they're not all the same. No, we didn't miscount this race in this way or that race in that way." If they deny it enough, everyone will know that it's true. Oddly, though, in this case it actually WILL be true.
So I think we should also allege that they have sex with barnyard animals.
Many slashdotters seem surprised this is happening, comparing it to any company that sues its customers. They are ignoring the fact that government purchasing is different from a private customer purchasing a product. Whereas, a private customer can make a decision based on any arbritary criteria (heh, that sales lady sure is cute...), government agencies are suppose to be neutral. They define the criteria, and pick the best alternative, i.e., the one that best satisfies the criteria. The criteria must be fully disclosed to all participants, and all participates must be given the same information. Any deviations from this process can lead to a lawsuit. Right or wrong, that is what Diebolt is claiming.
Rumor has it that the state voted twice - on AutoMARK machines the result was a unanimous win for AutoMARK. The second vote used Diebold machines and resulted in several votes for Pat Buchanan.
-- I might be stupid, but you have to be good at something.
When I heard this story on the morning news here in Boston, my first reaction was, "why are they suing over losing a measly $9 million contract?" My guess is their legal bill if they were to pursue this to the end would easily run to seven figures. According to the article, Diebold's attorney stated that "the company is not alleging any improprieties by the secretary of state's office. Instead, it is saying the office acted in good faith but made a mistake in the selection." MA Secretary of State Galvin doesn't think there's any reason to re-open this matter; I doubt the courts will either.
What's especially surprising is that this move comes after a recent Diebold SEC filing suggested that Diebold is considering leaving the voting machine business because the bad PR the company has received is starting to affect its much more important ATM business. Banks don't want to put a machine in front of its customers whose manufacturer gets accused of building shoddy voting equipment every time an election is held.
RTFA. Diebold isn't claiming corruption. They are saying that Massachusetts made a mistake. They are honestly claiming that in a fair competition, there is no way anyone could have possibly picked AutoMARK, and that the people who made the choice were simply wrong and should be forced to pick them. Nothing about corruption at all. In fact, they specifically say it isn't about corruption.
If it were as you say, it would almost make sense.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If it's not an issue of impropriety, then what's the legal basis for the suit? Any lawyers out there who can shed some light on this?
I would imagine the rational goes something like this:
"The secretary of state's office set their requirments for a voting machine contract, and invited bids. We have looked at the bid they accepted, and looked at ours. We believe our bid meets the criteria far more closely than the bid that was accepted, and we think any objective observer would agree. We don't think anything improper went on, but we do believe that the state has not selected a vendor in line with the rules they laid out. There for, the process has not treated us fairly"
In a nutshell, they're saying the state did not fairly apply their own rules. If they had, Diebold believe they would have won.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
Step 1: Establish a credit account with Oil Company A.
Step 2: Call them and ask the price of oil next time you need some.
Step 3: Get a load of oil from Oil Company B, who happens to have a better prioce that week.
Step 4: Get your credit account cancelled by Oil Company A because they know how often you should need oil and you didn't order form them.
No, it's not a lawsuit, but they're denying you credit for simply buying from their competition.
This is all perfectly legal in the State of Connecticut. It's like driving by a Mobil station to get cheaper gas at Shell, then Mobil cuts up your Mobil card.
Business today seems to run on the notion that if it's not specifically prohibited, we should try and do it, no matter how bad it looks. I get better ethics and learning curves from my third graders.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Yeah heaven forbid an important decision could be made via non-verifiable means with no paper trail...
...that could potentially be affected by this. Imagine Microsoft suing you because you bought a machine with Linux instead of Windows: "You made the wrong choice in your OS...please install Windows or we'll sue."
I suppose *that* particular situation is taken care of by the fact you get a machine with Windows whether you want to or not, for the most part, but if this were actually allowed, and actually went for Diebold (God forbid), then this litigenous society will have been taken to a whole new level:
"You made the wrong choice flying SouthWest. Buy a ticket on United now or we'll sue."
"You purchased Fords for your fleet vehicles when Chevy is the obviously better choice. Switch or we'll sue."
etc.
Now that I think about it, consider the NEW Pepsi challenge:
"I like the taste of cup A."
"You've made the wrong choice. Say you like what's in cup B or we'll sue."
"Um...I like the taste of cup B?"
"Great! Tell us why!"
To counter the editor's and the submitter's obvious bias against the company, here is their position as reported by a more professional journalist in TFA:
You, me, and any other private-sector entity do not have to explain our whims and caprices when (not) buying something (which may, actually, be unfortunate) to any one other than, perhaps, family members or stock-holders. The government, however, is legally obliged to pick the best — all of us are the stock-holders...
Knowing the policies and the corruption levels of Taxachusetts, Diebold may well be right suspecting something foul...
Diebold is, obviously, acting in its own best interests, but that's how life in this country is — we don't need people/companies to all be good and exemplary. Our system simply manages to pit the disagreeable qualities of some against such qualities of the others. In addition to the obvious free-market examples, we also rely on one (quite possibly crooked) politician to expose dishonesty of her opponent...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Diebold could have a case if, the state issued a set of criteria (all of which were quantifiable and accurately measured) in the RFQ. The state has an obligation to the people of Massachusetts to select the best product. But the state would have some wiggle room if any of those selection criteria were not quantifiable, (such as the lack of confidence in the electoral process associated with the Diebold name). Those sorts of criteria could outweigh all the others. It's unlikely the state didn't leave that wiggle room in its decision-making process. If Diebold wins this I'm going to have to consider suing all of the employers who didn't hire me.
Diebold's real complaint is that when the committee voted on which company to go with, Diebold wasn't allowed to count the votes.
Corporate Headquarters: 1-330-490-4000
Here's what I just emailed to their PR department:
Since when has slashdot been about "objective news reporting"?
Uhhmm...when reporting on Objective-C?
I work for an agency under DoD. I had some end of year fundage to spend so I decided to buy some printers and networkable scanners - about $100k worth of gadgets. I'd requested HP hardware because that's pretty much what the infrastructure here is geared to support.
Because of the size of the contract award the thing went out for open bid - and I was contacted by another printer manufacturer. I won't tell you their name, but their initials are L-e-x-m-a-r-k.
Strongarm tactics ensue. First the local contracting office asked me to define printing and scanning requirements as the Other Printer Company believes they can meet my requirements at a lower cost - but we won't mention the fact that all the supplies I have in stock are from the Printer Company I Wanted To Use and adding another hardware vendor would be a logistical nightmare.
So - starting with the network scanners I start looking at hardware specs. The Other Printer Company says they can meet my requirements, but since a digital sender is an input device as opposed to an output device, I would have to get the new hardware certifiied by the network spies and I don't have time to do that, so for that part of the procurement I got the hardware I requested.
The printers were another matter. Once you've specified dpi, print speed and networking capabilities you've pretty much got to go with whoever brings the lowest bid - so the Other Printer Company won that.
During the acquisition process I felt like I was being strongarmed by the Other Printer Company and since I couldn't give a good reason not to use their hardware I have to use it. If I'd have had a week instead of a day to process the procurement I probably could have.
I have learned that I need to fine-tune my hardware requirements to keep it from happening again - but manufacturers can and will sue the government for buying from somebody else.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
For anyone that's spent any amount of time in government contracting, you'd know this isn't uncommon.
Government acquisition contracts are supposed to go to the best product. Determining "best" is supposed to be based on an objective vendor selection process where certain aspects of each product are given a score, and the aggregate makes the decision. These vendor selection processes are sometimes not written well, often by people who don't really understand what it is they are comparing.
Let me give you an example from one vendor selection I worked on, for Ethernet switches. One of the criteria was "Supported VLANs." The product with the most supported VLANs was given a 1, and anyone less was given a fraction thereof equivilant to how many it supported. In this case, vendor A supported 4096 VLANs, while Vendor B supported 1024 VLANs. In this one criteria, vendor A was four times better than Vendor B, even though we only needed support for, at most, a dozen VLANs, which both devices could easily support.
In this instance, our complaints were heard and the problems were corrected.
However, often, this doesn't happen, and bogus criteria is used to make a decision.
On rare occasions, though, you'll even see vendor selection criteria written by people who've made a decision on which vendor they want to purchase, and the criteria is skewed to ensure that a certain product is purchased. This is rarely corruption, usually it's someone who already "knows" that a given product is better, and is simply trying to "make sure the right decision is made." For example, a Linux zealot writing vendor selction criteria for deciding on whether to go with Linux or Microsoft servers.
The exact vendor selection criteria, often being secret, leaves vendors that had reasonable belief that they should have won completely baffled as to why they lost. Unlike commercial transactions, where there is no recourse, they can bring the case to court to see if there was any improper behavior in the vendor selection process.
This actually benefits the taxpayer, as it gives oversight to procurment which is paid for by your tax dollars.
Just because in this case it's a company nobody likes, everyone is crying foul. But, in reality, it's a Good Thing.
Clearly, by convincing stupid americans that burnt coffee isn't burnt at all, just stronger, and making them feel like connoisseurs. Off topic, I know. Can't resist the urge to bash Starbucks.
The future isn't here until I can type "car keys" into Google and have it say "You left them in your pants last night."
Seriously. When I was in undergrad I had a couple of friends who were in the business school. One of them characterized the business ethics program as, "If it's not already illegal then it's your moral obligation to do it in order to encourage people to make it illegal, because if you don't someone else will and they'll out-compete you..." etc.
My friend was as flabbergasted as I was.
I know how the locks work, we were locked in for the past three years.
This was on a will-call, no-lock, open account for credit.
I specifically did not lock in this year, for as predicted, prices went down, and I made out better than if I'd locked in.
Not only that, but I've had different people call the same company on the same afternoon as existing no-lock, prospective customer, (and against the current lock-in) and gotten two (three) different prices.
I've been up and down this with the heating oil division of the state consumer protection agency, and they allow that it looks anti-competitive, but there's no law against it, they can't say everyone does it, but they're pretty sure the big ones do.
I lucked out with two smaller dealers, one of which was willing to level with me on the outlook and believed their honest approach would be the better route. They got my business.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Great! I use words to mean whatever I feel like they should mean instead of the generally agreed upon conventions that have formed over time.
Flange Samson ton magnet flipper, lumberyard milquetoast tire iron?
Given the timing of their lawsuit, wouldn't the Doctrine of Laches apply? They could have filed suit well in advance of an actual election day.
Laches
n. the legal doctrine that a legal right or claim will not be enforced or allowed if a long delay in asserting the right or claim has prejudiced the adverse party (hurt the opponent) as a sort of "legal ambush." Examples: a) knowing the correct property line, Oliver Owner fails to bring a lawsuit to establish title to a portion of real estate until Nat Neighbor has built a house which encroaches on the property in which Owner has title; b) Tommy Traveler learns that his father has died, but waits four years to come forward until the entire estate has been distributed on the belief that Tommy was dead; c) Susan Smart has a legitimate claim against her old firm for sexual harassment, but waits three years to come forward and file a lawsuit, after the employee who caused the problem has died, and the witnesses have all left the company and scattered around the country. The defense of laches is often raised in the list of "affirmative defenses" in answers filed by defendants, but is seldom applied by the courts. Laches is not to be confused with the "statute of limitations," which sets specific periods to file a lawsuit for types of claims (negligence, breach of contract, fraud, etc.).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the role grammar to accurately reflect the tone and meaning of what one types? The proper use of punctuation should convey the tone. The problem is that everyone has started typing like they speak, when the written word is conveys emotion differently - i.e. not better, not worse - than spoken English.
:)
This is especially true of irony and sarcasm. Every day some slashdotter complains about leaving off the irony tags - as if they didn't exist pre-internet. The problem isn't that sarcasm translates badly to text, the problem is that the poster hasn't learned to properly write sarcastic statements.
We should really be learning how to write better, rather than forcing spoken English into text.
The contract dispute in question seems to center on the use of systems for accessibility, not the purchase of a complete set of new systems. According to The Verifier Massachusetts use a mixture of Central-Count and Precinct-Count optical scanners for their elections with accessible devices for the disabled. That being the case I doubt that Diebold has much of a case.
For those unfamiliar with the dispute AutoMARK is a ballot marking system that allows voters with disabilities to use a touchscreen, keypad, or "binary switch" (sip and puff or gell-pad for people with no hands or little control over said hands say due to parkinson's or stroke) to fill out a printed ballot. The voter's choices are marked on the ballot using an ink that makes them suitable for scanning by any standard optical scanner (including the Diebold and ES&S scanners used in Massachusetts. The advantage of this system is that it enables voters with disabilities to cast the same type of ballot as everyone else thus avoiding the second-class-voter problem.
Diebold has no such device. In juristictions that use Diebold systems for accessibility, voters with disabilities cast their vote on a Diebold AccuVote-TS or TSX, a touchscreen Direct-Recording-Electronic system. Such votes are saved to the machine's internal flash disk and tallied at the end of the night separately from the votes cast on the optical scanners by every other person.
This is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, this means deploying two parallel voting systems on election day and tallying them separately. In effect this creates two classes of voters and subjects disabled voters to using a second-tier system. Similarly Diebold has yet to deploy the same range of accessibility features as are available on the AutoMark. For example they have yet to produce a usable "binary-switch" system.
For that reason I find it unlikely that Diebold will win this case because they are selling, quite simply, an inferior product.