Slashdot Mirror
Legal Troubles Continue To Mount For Diebold
dstates writes "The State of Maryland has filed a $8.5M claim against Premier Election Systems (previously known as Diebold), joining Ohio in seeking damages from the company. The claim alleges that election officials were forced to spend millions of dollars to address multiple security flaws in the machines. Previously, Diebold paid millions to settle a California lawsuit over security issues in their machines. The dispute comes as Maryland and Virginia prepare to scrap the touch screen electronic voting systems they bought after the 2000 presidential election. California, Florida, New Mexico, and Iowa have already switched to optical scanners, and voters in Pennsylvania are suing to prevent the use of paperless electronic voting systems in their state. Meanwhile, Artifex Software is suing Diebold for violations of the GPL covering the Ghostscript software technology used in the proprietary voting machines."
Man, it must really be xmas! LOL!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
He didn't say Christmas. He said Xmas. Totally different holiday.
elections in the USA for what, to replace one corrupt politician with another?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efKguI0NFek
The truth is that while paperless may sound sexy it is not really practical. They are trying to apply technology to what is a social problem.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
They'll probably get a bailout for their efforts too.
They should hold a referendum so people can vote for getting rid of these flawed electronic voting machi.. oh wait!
Anyone else find it kind of weird that this is happening right around the time that Bush and Cheney and Co. are heading out of office?
And this is what pisses me off so much! People like Avi Rubin WARNED of the pitfalls in Dielbold (and other) systems years ago and the pols didn't listen. I remember writing to my Maryland State Rep YEARS ago about inherent problems in Diebold systems and referred him to Professor Rubin's work and got the pat-on-the-head response telling me not to worry. Screw all of them. I can't believe how angry this makes me.
You mean XF86-mas, or X.org-mas?
We could celebrate with a new newsgroup, alt.die.bold.die
Hopefully, when it comes time to nail them to the wall, they'll use Wilson's Nails.
Congresscritters when they kneejerked after the 2000 elections and gave us HAVA in an effort to look like they were doing something. 357 Representatives and 92 Senators seemed to think it was a great idea, not to mention all the states that signed up going "ooh, free money!"
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
I thought it was OS Xmas.
Seriously, the crap that kept the Bush administration in office has paid off.
Does anyone believe that the 2000 election was a legitimate Bush win? Does anyone believe that Diebold DIDN'T tamper with the machines? Now that bush is leaving office, we find that the machines are insecure and aren't going to be used?
Now, *all* of the wealthy Bush supporters made HUGE amounts of money under Bush. The bailout was basically a theft of $700B (and more to come) from the U.S. treasury for the very people that have been getting rich 8 years. Never in the history of man-kind has so much relative wealth been given to so few. How did this happen?
I can't think of a single policy of this administration that was designed NOT to remove money from the middle class and transfer it into the hands of the more wealthy. Immigration, trade, health care, intellectual property, and even the department of the interior and the CPB have all been centered around either allowing corporations to make money at the expense of the people, or out-right giving money to large corporations directly.
Now, we, the regular people, call us middle class, working poor, unemployed engineers, have to somehow rebuild the economy after its departure.
I'm 45 years old. I am ill at what I've seen happen to my country. It is a rush to the bottom. If we are not a third world nation already, we will be. Its disgusting.
"Diebold" always struck me as such a typical bond-villain type of name; "Premier Election Systems" sounds like it's trying to cover up that the company is run by the mafia... maybe they should buy voting machines from ACME? Sure they'd blow up every now and then, and the roadrunner would get away, but in many ways such obvious failure would be better than subtle and undetected vote-rigging :-)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
All wonderful jokes, but Xmas (in my mind at least) is the consumerism day, while Christmas represents the true, original spirit of the holiday, before corporations got their grubby little paws on everything.
The X stands for chi, the Greek letter and first letter in the Greek word Christ. Xmas is simply an abbreviation for Christmas.
Grubby little paws? Corporations I know have huge powerful sucking tentacles, and they're in everything.
Happy Festivus!
On the other hand, xmas might sound more consumerist precisely because the filthy corporations tried to distance themselves from Christ, both to persuade Christians to think more about shopping and to include, er, heathens in the consumerist orgy.
Of course, Christ never had anything to do with Christmas anyway. He was probably born in August-ish if he existed at all, and Christmas was just the Catholics' attempt to usurp yet another pagan holiday that had been around ever since people knew what a solstice was. So perhaps "Xmas" is a (slightly) better thing anyway.
Happy Newtonmas, everyone!
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Paperless shouldn't even be attempted.
This is the system used to elect leaders. Trillions of dollars and millions lives are affected by election results.
Whatever system you choose must have full audit capabilities ... and that means paper.
The only reason for using electronics is to get faster results to those with short attention spans.
No sig today...
I feel sorry for Stephen Heller, the whistleblower who was charged with three felonies for revealing Diebold's legal problems, in Feb 2004.
You mean the pagan holiday with the lights and the tree and the gift giving that the Christians stole? Because Easter(Ishtar) and Christmas(Winter Solstice) are both as pagan as you can get. The Christians in the Catholic church didn't even bother changing the traditions, they just stuck some made up Christian reasons for doing them. BTW, just FYI, Jesus was born in June, during the Roman tax census IIRC.
Now to TFA, I don't know who made the voting machines we used this year in AR(not Diebold because these actually work) but IMHO they really need to roll these out nationwide. It was truly a pleasure to vote this year. In fact the entire process was so friendly and orderly and voter efficient it is a shame they don't just copy it nationwide, as it makes it truly nice to vote. Who would have thought AR would be ahead of the curve in something?
Anyway I walk in and everything is nice and neat with 5 machines and an orderly line. Before I even get a chance to vote I'm already impressed by the way they handled voters who went to the wrong polling place. Instead of sending them all over town trying to find the right place an election official asked them to set aside for a moment and he would get on his cell after finding out which district they voted last in and have them transferred. Those that showed up in the wrong place only had an extra 5 minute wait before being allowed to vote with everyone else. Very nice. Then I get up to the machine and you could tell some serious thought went into this one. A large screen with a big round blue circle that you would touch to choose your candidate or position, and when you made your choice a large pop up would read "We believe you wish to vote for...Is this correct? If not please push the green cancel button to the left of this message" and when you confirmed a large, easy to read printout would scroll up under a glass plate to the left of the screen, so you could easily look down and make sure the machine was putting down your choice. Very nice. Then when you were finished the machine would blink and a volunteer would collect the electronic vote with this cartridge and the paper ballot. Then the ballot was placed into a box and the electronic vote was placed on the table with the election officials for use with the next voter.
The entire process took less than 10 minutes and made voting truly a pleasure. Volunteers were offering coffee and donuts to those waiting in line and were just as friendly and helpful as could be. I only wish all government dealings could be as friendly and efficient as voting was this year. And this year there weren't any "surprises" and the election results went pretty much exactly what the polls taken the week before had said they were going to be. So all in all I was quite happy with the machines this year and only wish that everyone could have as nice an experience voting as I did. On and Merry Xmas!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
then don't rant - act
Think I haven't? Short of taking up arms against my country, I've done all the legal things I can. The tide is turning, I think, but it takes a long time to wake up the U.S.A.
I honestly believe that the vast majority of Americans are motivated less by money and more by "doing the right thing." The problems is that "the right thing to do" has been purposefully obfuscated by the bastards in power. By using christiantity and the talking heads of talk radio, propaganda minister of the Bush administration, Karl Rove, has successfully turned America in against itself. Dividing families and groups against each other over simplistic moral debates, while completely drowning the substantive discussions about what is truly best for the country.
All this so that they can rob the country of its wealth and make themselves rich at the same time.
I'll say here and now, Bush and Cheney and everyone in their administration have been traitors to the U.S.A.
Signed, patriotic American!!
I dunno about all you barbarians, but I had a Saturnalia party, and trust me, wearing togas and drinking wine is way better than the boredom going on today..
Oops. You truly are clueless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3_xFb1sWKU
Did I mention Mike Connell, Rove's computer guru, subpoenaed in election, is now dead?
No we do not need those dog crap machines by the crappy company Diebold (who changed their name in an effort to obfuscate) rolled out to the rest of the nation.
What we DO NEED is to OUTLAW all electronics in our elections. PERIOD!!!
I'm usually not someone who sides with people trying to drain a company through legal means, but in this case I'm willing to make an exception. Bleed them. Make them go bankrupt. If they go under, that's the last we'll see of EVoting, because nobody would willingly touch it again with a ten foot pole.
Bah, if there's any proof that they tampered with election results, surely that should be grounds for a criminal case, not a civil one?
Heck, as far as I'm concerned screwing with the democratic process amounts to high treason.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.