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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
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.
COLUMBUS - In a decision that surprised nobody, a 6-man 6-woman jury voted 11-0 with no abstentions in favor of the plaintiffs. Testimony on damages resumes next week.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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.
Didn't RTFA, I see. The machines in question were delivered in the last year, and 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.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
The point has been missed here that Windows XP, Vista or whatever is entirely the wrong choice - just as a full Fedora installation would be. Windows CE or similar would be a different story as would an embedded linux. What we have here is vast amounts of needless expense and complexity which may make a demo quick to produce but in the long run gives you an unreliable and expensive machine. The things really are nothing but a demo, and ridiculously easy to turn into a rigged demo. I think it is very likely that bribery was involved in winning the contracts.
It is not partisan to go after the crooks, even if the crime leads to the GOP leadership.
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.
Learn to love Alaska
You have got to be kidding me. You do understand that the CEO of the company that makes the voting machines has given his assurance, in public, to do everything he can to help the Republican Party. You do understand that in the last 3 election cycles, the Republican party has done everything it can to limit the number of voters registered and actually prevented voters from casting their ballot. They've gone so far as to use robocalling to tell voters that the polling place address has changed, or that people will lose their government assistance if they show up to vote, or that there will warrant checks on everyone voting. They tell US Citizens of Hispanic descent that their citizenship status may be reviewed if they show up at the polling place. All of these things have been documented.
In Florida, 150,000 new voter registrations were "lost" by the Republican secretary of state. There are instance after instance of examples of the Republicans doing everything in their power to screw up our electoral system. Go read about the lawsuit of the State of California vs. Diebold. And where all of those games have failed, they are not above simply fucking with the machines, in the dark of night, when no Democratic or Independent election judges are present (see the 2004 Georgia Gubernatorial election where 4 hours after the poll closed, the Democrat had a commanding lead, and somehow, after midnight, with only the GOP election commissioner present, an additional 60,000 Republican votes were "found" in the voting machines. Go read about Florida, 2000.
This issue is partisan as hell, because today's Republican party knows that their only chance at winning is to game the system. They are as hostile to democracy as any tinpot dictator.
I have gotten spam emails about how Barack Obama is responsible, personally for killing some 30-plus people (some of those names are on a similar list attributed to Bill Clinton's homicidal hand). I have gotten emails about how Barack Obama is a secret muslim who was actually born in Indonesia (or Kenya, or Nigeria, or Malaysia). I have gotten emails about how Barack Obama is the motherfucking antichrist.
Now tell me about how you're "hoping this issue does not become partisan".
I'm not questioning your sincerity, LaskoVortex, but your awareness of the state and integrity of one of our political parties seems to come up a bit short. Believe me, there are worse things in a democratic nation that "partisanship".
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
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.