Diebold Goes 0 For 3 In Massachusetts Case

beetle496 writes "ComputerWorld reports that last week a judge denied Diebold's request to block ES&S pact with Massachusetts. This is a follow-up to the earlier discussion here after Diebold contended that the state had erred in selecting the machines of its rival, citing accessibility provisions of the HAVA law. Quoting: 'Diebold's request for an injunction to block the execution of the contract with ES&S was rejected... The judge also denied Diebold's request to have an accelerated discovery process and to keep the state's legal team from viewing internal Diebold documents... "The suit is still there, but they went zero for three yesterday," the spokesman said.' The actual accessibility concerns have been discussed over at the TEITAC listserv, including a few telling observations from experts familiar with accessible voting and at least one state insider."

Comments

Diebold should just

[ScrewMaster]

stick to ATMs.

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[NightWulf]

one for the good guys. It's a start. Just amazes me how in some countries the mere thought of voter fraud creates giant revolutions, while in America you have blatant evidence of fraud, and very few people care.

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[Cylix]

In America, we are just hoping to get a piece of the fraud pie!

We have dreams too... they are just different then everyone else.

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[Volante3192]

I used to care. But I think voter apathy is contagious...

Frankly, I think this country would be better off the sooner we start *really* fucking it up than later. Shock people into realizing their fragile little world is on the brink of becoming glass shards...

If we just slowly slide downward, people won't notice...like now. It's like gently turning the heat up on a frog in a pot of water on the stove. Need to crank that oven dial to 11 and make froggy jump out and go "DAMN, THAT'S HOT"

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[Kandenshi]

Indeed, it's disturbing and scary how apathetic people are over here about the political system. I for one propose that we immediately

Oh, crap! The newest episode of "So You Think You Can Dance" is airing!

bbl

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[value_added]

I used to care. But I think voter apathy is contagious...

Could be that the options aren't too exciting. There's never a CowboyNeal option, is there?

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[Daniel Dvorkin]

Frankly, I think this country would be better off the sooner we start *really* fucking it up than later. Shock people into realizing their fragile little world is on the brink of becoming glass shards...

It's very easy to say that, sitting in your office or bedroom, comfortable with a cup of coffee and your browser pointed at Slashdot ...

Revolutions are ugly, ugly things, and so are the circumstances that create them. Anyone who seriously wants things to get much worse, much faster, is either a psychotic, or just isn't thinking things through. (Usually the latter, of course.)

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[Daniel Dvorkin]

Except there's no guarantee of "getting back on track" with a revolution, at all. In fact, the odds are pretty well against it.

We got extraordinarily lucky once -- we could very easily have turned into the first in the long, sad series of colonies that have won their independence only to sink into a morass of dictatorship and self-inflicted poverty. The fact that we didn't is due to the group of great minds that happened to gather around the idea of independence at that particular moment; it's not the usual situation. And internal (as opposed to colonial) revolutions are usually even worse. France? Check. Russia? Check. Iran? Check. Honestly, it's hard to think of an internal revolution in a major country that's turned out well, ever.

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[Anonymous Coward]

If we compare this to the Civil War, where are we? Missouri Compromise? Dred Scott? John Brown? Restocking Fort Sumner? We're certainly not at the Civil War point yet.

We're at the whinging-crybaby stage. There was much greater civil unrest in the 1930s, the 1960s, and the 1910s than there is now.

Just listen to the revolutionary wannabes. One of the things they find most sinister is that, although most people say they dislike the government, very few are willing to do anything about it, whether violent or nonviolent.

Elaborate and unlikely explanations are cooked up to explain this puzzling and distressing circumstance. People have been brainwashed by the TV. Mass media keeps them ignorant of the impending disaster. They are too disillusioned by the failures of democracy to work for change. They think they will be picked off the street in a van and shipped to Guantánamo. They have been sated by the ready availability of bread and circuses. (Pop-Tarts and World of Warcraft?) They are tranquilized by water fluoridation, aspartame, and airliner oxygen-deprivation.

Somehow no consideration at all is given to the simplest, the most obvious explanation for the grand puzzle: namely, that people have always loved to complain about the government, but at the moment few really believe that it's particularly oppressive.

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[Telvin_3d]

If, "Malevolent Dictatorships" really do not last, it is only true from a historical perspective. From the point of view of the people living through them, I bet they drab on and on and on. After all, dictatorships have certainly proven to be a lasting think in much of South America, Africa and the Middle East. They haven't always been the same dictator for long, but the dictatorship goes on.

Actually, I can't think of a single example in the past half century that a people got fed up with a dictator, threw him out of power (with or without outside assistance) and then were still a democracy 10 years later.

The Diebold Distraction

[Anonymous Coward]

ES&S is the corporation which made the machines used to steal^H^H^H^H^H carry out the Presidential election in Ohio in 2004.

I don't know why we're congratulating ES&S on its victory over Diebold. Why is one black box maker any better than another? Let's use a sensible system instead.

Re:The Diebold Distraction

[EvanED]

It's completely arbitrary and based on a naive world view. If Diebold is bad, their competition HAS to be good.

To be fair, hasn't that been the US's foreign policy for, like, half a century at least?

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend"?

So it's not just /.ers screaming "M$! OMG TEH EV1L!11!!"

Re:The Diebold Distraction

[Volante3192]

We're not congratulating ES&S, as much as being happy that justice is working. The judge rejected all of Diebold's whiny claims. ES&S is irrelevant to that point.

Re:Possible name changes for Diebold

[UbuntuDupe]

If a corporation gave me 35% of its profits every year, before I asked, regardless of what I ever did for it, I think people would characterize that relationship as "me asserting myself over that corporation".

Isn't it time for open source?

[Toe, The]

There are several open source voting machine projects on SourceForge. WTF is our problem for not getting our governments to use the auditable machines?

Or what about open source governance? Isn't it time to get rid of the institutions that are based on those of our pre-human ancestors? How about a little technology in our government?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_governanc e
http://www.metagovernment.org/

We have everything we need.

Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, a company can sue over the selection of a compeditors items/services?

"Go ahead and buy a Mac. We'll see you in court"

Re:Massachusetts

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, um, Massachusetts is the state that thinks that anything with blinking lights on it is a bomb, forcing them to evacuate Boston over some signs with blinking lights and batteries on them.

Then there's the Big Dig, where a tunnel with 2-ton tiles which were held up with bolts that were simply GLUED to the roof fell and killed someone.

Not to mention that if you go looking for any Open Document files from the Massachusetts government, you won't find any. They were supposed to switch over to open formats completely starting in January, 2007.

This

[Quzak]

Who ever wins, we lose. Pure and simple. Wake up folks.