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Ohio Sues Over Missing Electronic Votes
dstates writes "The Columbus Post Dispatch reports that the State of Ohio is suing Premier Election Systems (previously known as Diebold) over malfunctions in electronic voting machines. Election workers found that votes were 'dropped' in at least 11 counties when memory cards were uploaded to computer servers. The same voting machines are used nationwide. The company blames a conflict between their software and antivirus software for the problem and says that an advisory was issued on the subject. The Ohio lawsuit contends that the company made false representations and failed to live up to contractual obligations and seeks punitive damages."
For fuck's sake, can we just use an open source solution or build a better one already? This should be OSS's moment to shine because amongst us there are the ideas, talent and skills to make a system that for all purposes is more secure, transparent and robust than what is currently on offer from Diebold or any other proprietary vendor.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Maybe a couple charges of treason should be thrown in as well. Electoral fraud. Coup coup d'état. Indecent exposure.
perhaps is is the American people (and the people of Iraq) who should be seeking punitive damages from Diebold.
I'm hoping that this issue does not become partisan. Many people are unhappy about the outcome of some recent elections, but I think anyone, no matter what their political leanings, should be patently against black box electronic voting. These machines can be abused by either party.
Just callin' it like I see it.
Oh, this will be partisanized. In modern American politics, it's not about being right so much as it is about winning, about defeating the other team.
If it turns out that this benefited one party, the other will attack and the benefiting party will stonewall.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Oh please, Windows is the reason it went wrong?
No, the reason it failed is because it is a bad product.
I've used Windows and Linux software, as have many people here, and believe me, I've seen great and crap software on both platforms. Writing for non windows platforms doesn't infer some magical 'excellence' to code.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Election workers found that votes were 'dropped' in at least 11 counties when memory cards were uploaded to computer servers. The same voting machines are used nationwide. The company blames a conflict between their software and antivirus software for the problem and says that an advisory was issued on the subject.
Ok, if you are buying computers to be used as election machines why would you even run an antivirus? There should be no way a virus could even touch the install. Don't connect it to the internet, and think twice before even networking it. Don't have a single USB port on it, no CD ROM drive, card reader, whatever. And no HDs. What they should really have is an open source BIOS (such as Linux BIOS) booting Linux or another OSS OS, which logs into a user that only has rights to use one program, and that is the only program installed. Preferably, the data should be stored on a Compact Flash card for fast booting which would have double or triple redundancy over multiple cards.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
It's like they're allergic to using actual professional-grade tools. I'd suppose deliberate incompetence, but tell me this first: do they use those tools on their ATMs, when there's actual money at stake?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Doesn't sound unreasonable to me, considering this kid could face prison for selling a single vote. That seems pretty hypocritical considering the debacle that is our election system, but hey at least it makes them look like they give a damn.
I'm thinking that regardless of partisan issues, I think long prison sentences and company-destroying fines for Diebold are in order
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Indeed, something doesn't sit well with me about that explanation....
One might reasonably ask why one would need to run anti-virus software on what should be a completely isolated network of computers that should never be in any way connected to anything resembling a public network. One might reasonably ask why an antivirus program would interfere with a network connection. One might reasonably ask how the authors of a piece of software could be so inept that they would fail to report such a failure to the operators in an understandable fashion, particularly on something so fundamentally critical to the operation of a democracy.
As much as I believe the adage that one shouldn't attribute malice where incompetence would suffice, the more reports of fundamental flaws in their software I hear, the harder it is for me to conceive of a team of actual software engineers who could be that inept.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
perhaps it is the American people (and the people of Iraq) who should be seeking punitive damages from Diebold.
Having the executives stood up against a wall and shot would seem to be the appropriate punitive award. Free elections are...were...the foundation of this country. Deliberately undermining the basis of our democracy would be...should be...the very definition of treason.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I'm hoping that this issue does not become partisan.
The CEO of the Diebold was a die-hard partisan, and a top fundraiser for a partisan candiate. We all remember the quote where he "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes" to the partisan candidate. And if by magic, election fraud allegedly helped the partisan candidate win the tightly contested election in Ohio.
These machines can be abused by either party.
Sure. Both parties may do it. The point is, the machines WERE abused by one of the parties. The machines are one problem. The abuse is a second problem. Since there is no audit trail, not even fair-minded, non-partisan individuals can audit the election result. How ironic. And partisan.
This situation was partisan from the start.
It is not partisan to go after the crooks, even if the crime leads to the GOP leadership.
This is clearly just the start. Ohio seems to have a slam dunk case against Diebold/Premier with regard to the newer machines. If Ohio wins this one, anti-Diebold suspicions become much more credible, and you can expect a deeper investigation into the company's role in the probably stolen 2004 election.
Why make it for profit? We're talking about some of the very the tools we use for our democracy to function. It shouldn't be built by a corporate entity. It should be built by those beholden to no one other than the people of the United States.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
I'm against the death penalty, but if I were for it I can think of few crimes worse than tampering with our system of government. Enough men and women have died to create it and uphold it that I feel it's at least as bad a crime as murder. Prison sentences and fines seem pretty petty compared to the integrity of our nation.
E pluribus unum
Even if you took away all of Bush's votes in Ohio (almost 3 million, or 4.6% of his total), he still would have defeated Kerry in the national popular vote. So ultimately, this controversy over Ohio doesn't really change who should have won the 2004 Presidency - if there were irregularities which gave Ohio to Bush, it merely had the effect of making the Electoral vote match the popular vote. Quite different from the situation in 2000 where Bush lost the popular vote but won the Electoral vote based on a controversial count in Florida. So any partisanship in the controversy over Ohio really doesn't matter - the will of the people won out. Let's just drop it and instead focus on the braindead design of the machines and possible criminal behavior by the CEO of Diebold.
If it happened in Ohio, how can we be sure it didn't happen elsewhere? Since there are no records, we can't.
How do the numbers change if we apply this same logic to each state where these machines were used?
You've been modded insightful, but you're plain wrong. The game has very high stakes and so it has strict rules. It must be played by the rules — even if today we think the rules are not right any more. If that's the case, we can change the rules until they reflect our current standards, but you can't say: "Well, the rules weren't followed properly, but we got the result I think is more proper, so we ignore the rules".
In 2000 Bush won because someone said "well, let's stop playing the game now and whoever's in front, wins". That's not right. In 2004, Bush might've won because someone said "let's make sure Bush wins Ohio, even if he's not supposed to". Neither of those are the right way to play the game — there's thousands of reasons for that, and one of the most important is that it's divisive. If everyone agrees that the winners won fair and square — then, well the losers might reckon every else is dumb, or that the winners didn't play fair in the campaign, but at least the system works. They go home and lick their wounds and say "aren't they such meanies?" until they decide they want to begin fighting the next election. If there's any reason to believe your team was cheated, you won't forget this easily. And you must not. (In the end, the right thing to do in 2000 was probably for Bush to win, even though Gore won the popular vote; that or invalidate the election results and hold a new election in Florida with ballots designed according to a national standard that is demonstrably easy to read and follow, and with such novel voting tools as pens — things that are not black boxes and not likely to fail without the voter understanding that.)
You cannot drop this. Giving the election to the team you thought has a moral justification for winning, in spite of not winning based on the rules, is a step on the road to totalitarianism. The rules must be followed and the must reflect moral justifications that the general public upholds.
I also think I should point out that whether or not winning the national popular vote is the entitling criteria to winning the election is a matter of opinion. Many people honestly believe that votes should be weighted according to some standard (like states or land area, to give isolated people a bigger vote). Some people honestly believe that the best government can only occur when someone was born and brought up to be ruler from their youth. I myself think any system that doesn't result in me being the indisputable overlord of the whole world is flawed. So this is another reason why the question of national popular vote is completely irrelevant
You are allowed to say: "The rules are bad. We must fix the rules." But you cannot say: "The rules are bad. We must ignore them." The first election after the system switches from an electoral collage to a single popular electorate, then a team can claim victory solely on the basis of the popular vote. Until that day, there are no excuses.
(And to fairly disclose my bias: I'm not American, and I think Bush was a horrible mistake and I wish he'd never been elected. But more than that I want rules to be followed.)
Look out!
Karl Rove is about to be indicted for playing with the ohio election. Of course, in the end, my guess is that if this proceeds too fast, or if McCain gets in, it will not matter. Either W or McCain will pardon Rove. After all, the pub party ALWAYS comes before the nation or morality.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In modern American politics, it's not about being right so much as it is about winning, about defeating the other team.
That's because the two "teams" aren't different enough ideologically to make it about anything other than winning. Regardless of who wins this next election: the government will grow larger, the nanny state will increase, the Bill of Rights will be chipped slowly away, wealth will become more concentrated, the US will meddle in the affairs of other sovereign nations, public education will decline in quality, police forces will become more militant, incarceration rates will remain the highest in the industrialized world, and the failed War on Drugs will continue. All of these are problems that have spanned both Republican and Democratic power in both the Whitehouse and Congress. But the powers in those parties have already agreed on that direction for the country and options on those issues will not be offered to the American people.
sidenote: Because they also agree that "one man-one vote" will never go away, third parties are rendered moot.
We are all just people.