ES&S To Buy Diebold, Blackbox Voting To Sue

Gottesser writes "Long-time election rights activist Bev Harris (she had an HBO special a while back where she hired Hari Hursti to hack an optical scan voting machine) just sent this out: 'Diebold/Premier Election Systems is being purchased by Election Systems & Software (ES&S). According to a Black Box Voting source within the companies, there will be a conference call among key people at the companies within the next couple hours. An ES&S/Diebold-Premier acquisition would consolidate most US voting under one privately held manufacturer. And it's not just the concealed vote-counting; these companies now also produce polling place check-in software (electronic pollbooks), voter registration software, and vote-by-mail authentication software.' Our voting system is heading toward a server-centric model with our vote being delivered to us by computers under lock and key far away from public oversight. Here's ES&S's press release. Wikipedia's got something on the ongoing string of ES&S controversies as well."

Comments

Enforce Good Practices

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm writing software for an FDA-approved device. The requirements are quite stringent and everything gets looked at very closely. From everything I've heard these voting machines would not pass such an inspection. It's a bit of a pain but it does lead to more reliable and trustworthy devices. These requirements and the approval process already exist, seems like a good place to start.

Re:Doesn't matter now.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

So, you have evidence that Democrats, as a group, are any less concerned about the inherent dangers of all-electronic voting systems than the population as a whole?

I'm a Democrat. I voted for Obama. I'm glad he's President. (Or rather, I'm glad McCain isn't President; not quite the same thing, but it's what we've got.) And now that we have a Democrat in the White House, I think it is exactly as important that we have a trustworthy election process as it was when had a Republican. I don't want anyone rigging elections, in favor of any candidate of any party.

No matter how bad things get, as long as we have honest elections, we have a chance to fix them. If we lose that ... forget it, it's over. Democrat, Republican, black, white, whatever: if the people in charge have the means to ensure they stay in charge regardless of the will of the people, they will use that power, and we are permanently screwed.

In short, AC, don't assume everyone else shares your level of asshole cynicism. There are a lot of us who still care about the future of our country.

Re:So now . . .

[afidel]

Actually Cuyahoga County (largest in Ohio) threw out Diebold after they had horrid technical issues in 2004. They didn't need any vote rigging to screw the majority Democrat vote here, the huge failure rate of the machines meant lines were long enough that people left in disgust. We went back to all paper registers and scantron style ballots and 2008 was MUCH smoother despite significantly higher turnout.