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."

Comments

Punitive Damages

[ExileOnHoth]

If these machines affected the outcome of the election, perhaps it is the American people (and the people of Iraq) who should be seeking punitive damages from Diebold.

Re:Punitive Damages

[tthomas48]

I agree that the issue of blackbox voting machines should not be made into a partisan issue. On the other hand the issue of Diebold voting machines being a partisan issue was cemented when the CEO of Diebold said in a fundraising letter that he was committed to delvering Ohio for President Bush. It may have been the most ridiculously stupid comment ever, but it definitely had the effect of making the issue partisan.

Re:Punitive Damages

[Praedon]

Your signature is great... except for the fact that there are no jobs in Ohio, unless you love working at McDonalds! It's why I'm moving out of ohio VERY soon. South I hear is where the jobs are at.

My two cents about Diebold, is that I was contracted with them to set these machines up. When I started hearing about all the faults, I told them to take the job and shove it. I can't say what faults I saw, cause I was under contract and that whole NDA bs.. but I assure you that this could have all been avoided if us contractors were able to speak up before the first trieouts with these things.

Re:Antivirus software

[TheRealMindChild]

As someone who has had a couple of contracts working with Diebold, it wasn't only Windows, but Windows, VB6, and an Access database. I wish I were joking.

Maybe this is just stating the obvious...

[neokushan]

But shouldn't there be a law against tampering with elections? Like....a really really really serious, potentially company-destroying law?
The kind of law that would have fines and penalties so great, diebold is sent to the brink of bankruptcy and it's CEO's are all incarcerated?
Maybe that's a little extreme sounding to some, but when you consider that the very foundations your country was built on are at stake, you have to take a tough stand.
I certainly don't agree with the death penalty or anything like that, but I do think this should be a matter of the utmost importance.

Punitive damages..

[HockeyPuck]

If you assign punitive damages to a vote, aren't you then assigning a value to said vote? Since it's illegal to sell your vote to begin with, what good is it to assign a value to something you cannot sell in the first place.

If you can't sell or buy something, does it have value? Is it priceless or worthless?

Re:Punitive damages..

[AK Marc]

If you assign punitive damages to a vote, aren't you then assigning a value to said vote?

No. If you assign actual damages, then you are placing a value on the vote. Punitive damages are just that, punishment, regardless of the value of the loss.

Since it's illegal to sell your vote to begin with, what good is it to assign a value to something you cannot sell in the first place.

I can't sell my life (either to someone that would want to kill me for sport, or for slavery). Yet the government has put a value on human life. It's a couple million dollars. So you can value something that can't be sold. Just because it's statutorially illegal to sell something doesn't mean it doesn't have value. Prostitution is sale of something that is illegal to sell (except in Nevada), yet people manage to agree on a price for that all the time.

Re:It has nothing to do with Windows

[Eggplant62]

The one thing that I've never seen Linux do that Windows does extremely well is propagate viruses.

Again, why Windows? Why the worst of the worst of the worst???

Antivirus program conflict, my ass.

A family friend is part of an ohio watchdog list..

[plasmacutter]

A family friend of mine is part of an ohio voter watchdog mailing list.

The MSM has at best mentioned it in passing, but senior diebold officials with heavy connections to the republican party were left alone to perform "patches" on the voting machines which, aside from eye witnesses at the time, went entirely unlogged, and which were entirely unsupervised.

Shortly after, the 2004 presidential elections took place.

Re:End to End

[TeacherOfHeroes]

We use this exact pen and paper system in Canada, and TV stations are usually able to make a pretty good prediction by midnight as to who will win. The next morning, the newspaper headlines almost always confirm what the tv stations were predicting the night before.

You don't know that they didn't affect the outcome

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... the only elections they've affected were purely local ones.

And they didn't even affect them, since the miscounts were noticed and corrected from the paper audit trail built into the system.

You don't know that they didn't affect the elections. The miscounts THAT WERE VISIBLE may have been corrected. But that doesn't prove they aren't just the tip of an iceberg - like the mismatch of a few cents in an accounting ledger that may point to multiple errors that nearly canceled - in THAT check - while shorting one account by a bunch and boosting another by almost the same amount.

The tiny difference tell you something's wrong. They aren't necessarily the ONLY thing that is wrong. And if something else is wrong it may be wrong by a LOT.