We’ve had a lot of stories on this issue like this one and this one and this one. Looks like Diebold’s boss won’t be able to “deliver” any more votes to his friends.
Feds to Toughen E-Voting Standards?
A federal agency is set to recommend significant changes to specifications for electronic-voting machines next week, internetnews.com has learned.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is recommending that the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines.
DREs are currently used by more than 30 percent of jurisdictions across the U.S. and are the exclusive voting technology in Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland and South Carolina.
According to an NIST paper to be discussed at a meeting of election regulators at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., on Dec. 4 and 5, DRE vote totals cannot be audited because the machines are not software independent.
In other words, there is no means of verifying vote tallies other than by relying on the software that tabulated the results to begin with.
The machines currently in use are “more vulnerable to undetected programming errors or malicious code,” according to the paper.
The NIST paper also noted that, “potentially, a single programmer could ‘rig’ a major election.”
It recommends “requiring SI [software independent] voting systems in VVSG 2007.”
#14: “Your statement tars them with the same brush.”
You know what? You’re absolutely right.
I’ll say it again a different way. Diebold (I pick them because if you follow the links to past DU items they are about Diebold products) has created a product that is either incompetently or deliberately designed to be easy to compromise. If it was the former, then the company should be easy to put out of business via competition, assuming political friends don’t make competition impossible. If the latter, then it was done to ensure a particular political outcome. The tests done on the machines point in that direction. Tell me what other options there are given security and accuracy should be the top considerations of the design and development of a voting machine.
Diebold denying favoritism doesn’t absolve it of anything until their machines are impossible to influence.
Perhaps your friend (and many others in the company) don’t feel they have done anything wrong and very likely they haven’t. But that doesn’t absolve them of continuing to work for either an incompetent or corrupt company unless they personally are doing something to ensure change.
My vote is too important to play nice with hurting you and your friend’s feelings. Nothing less than the inability to tamper and 100% accuracy is acceptable. If Diebold and the other companies can prove they can achieve this, then I will back down. But given this article, clearly they haven’t been able to do so to the states and to the Federal government whose job it is to ensure such things.
You go, Uncle Dave!
#21 Uncle Dave, I am not trying to change your opinion of Diebold or anyone else. I am trying to get you to walk the walk that you’ve talked. Obviously you can’t see that, and for that I have to say I pity you. You made a statement and you won’t back it up, instead choosing to try to deflect it into other areas every time I bring it up. It’s sad, and you have definitely lowered the bar for all of your coworkers here.
I know it’s futile, but I’ll try one last time. You made an accusation. Back it up.
#14, #11 – No, that’s not good enough. If I make an accusation I back it up. You made an accusation. Back it up. Don’t guess, don’t assume…tell me where it happened.
#16, #15 I didn’t need to report it. It was a piece of a lawsuit that addressed several events. That was buried among them and missed by pretty much everyone.
…
A disclaimer here…this is all to the best of my knowledge based on talking to several people. If I’m wrong, then I’d be happy to be corrected.
Comment by Jeff — 11/30/2006 @ 3:58 pm
So, where is the identity of this law suit you mention? C’mon, you went to great lengths telling us how
you back up your crap. So back it up.
For some evidence of Diebold and other electronic vote tampering. Enjoy.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=1839
http://www.bartcop.com/diebold.htm
http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/
Never mind…I’ve wasted my time here. With your willingness to evade a question at all costs, have you considered running for office?
I’m glad to be able to agree with Uncle Dave, Diebold delivered the votes to their friends and the Democrats won. Often you can tell who’s committed a crime by who yells the loudest and again while it might not even occur to the Republicans to cheat, it did occur to the Democrats.
The Dead vote in Chicago, ballots are found in voting boxes in San Francisco Bay, and Democrat stronghold in Washington state are allowed to recount the votes until a Democrat wins. Yeah, the evil Republicans are at it again that’s why congress changed hands.
It bears some importance that the stated ideology of Stalin, the guy in the picture, is the same ideology of the Democrat party, ie socialist or communist it ends up the same either way, look at Venezuela the repression that’s beginning there, oh wait that’s a socialist and we can’t bring that stuff up can we
#25: I think I answered your question quite directly. Sorry you don’t like it. But to be more succinct, the actions of the company and the product it sells is its own answer.
Wow! I’d say hell must have frozen over (if I believed in the place) if I got traaxx to agree with me!
All we ask for is secondary verifiability. It’s that simple. If there is a question about how the final count was reached, there MUST be a human certifiable way to recount the tally.
Imagine going to the supermarket and having the register not give you a printed listing of your purchases, relying on the ‘trust us, the register is correct’ method. Questins? Sorry, we just keep a total of the items purchased, but they are not in any way tied to a particular purchaser. You were overcharged for this item??? Prove that you paid for it in the first place!
That is what non-paper trail voting machines ask the voters to do… trust a bulk result with no secondary verification method in case of questions. Our computer says there were 500 votes for Joe Smith… prove otherwise. You can’t, since there is no other count in existence than the electronic result, and there is no method to recount the votes.
I do believe in hell, angles, God, a right and a wrong and even dinosaurs, but Uncle Dave you’re just wrong.
Actually, if people are too lazy to go down to a voting booth and cast a paper ballot, something that we can recount until hell does freeze over along with all the possibilities of law suits and court battles, do we need to enable a voting system that’s this problematic and prone to cheating. I thought we have enough cheating with illegals voting and multiple ballots going to the same individuals, but it would seem that the powers want a fail safe system for their government, it’s obliviously not ours anymore.
Wow, Jeff. It must be wonderful to live in a fool’s paradise.
I know some nice people who worked for Enron. They would never commit accounting fraud. Therefore, if I use your Logic-Free Reasoning™, Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Andy Fastow, et alia are all pure as the driven snow.
After all, everyone knows that top management (and shareholders) at every corporation routinely seek approval of their actions from lower-level employees.
In case you didn’t notice (the phrase ‘selective blindness’ comes to mind here), it is no secret that Diebold’s board and leadership is made up of ardent supporters of the political party that looks out for the interests of those sad, put-upon unfortunates of our society, the super-rich. That would be the Republicans, for those slow on the uptake.
Of course, since their game was blown and they had millions of eyes watching for their trickery, they wisely decided to lay off the shenanigans.
Or maybe it’s all just coincidence. Yeah, that’s the (optically-scanned) ticket!
#30: Where am I wrong? I agree that paper ballots are better at this point. If we are going to have EVMs, then they need to be 100% accurate and tamper proof. Otherwise, for voters, what’s the point?
#31 – Heh…drew me back in even though I tried to drop this. Go back and read what I wrote. In every case I have not tried to defend the management of Diebold. In fact, I happen to think they’re pretty stupid for not responding smartly to what has gone on. I have defended the workers who are doing an honest job. It’s nice that Uncle Dave’s situation allows him to reside in an ivory tower and do only pure clean good work for whom he chooses. Unfortunately there are folks out there who are not in as good a situation, and those who feel they are trying to do the right thing . To follow your the line of reasoning you seem to be following you are advocating throwing the line accountants in jail just because they worked for Enron, regardless of whether they had any complicity with Lay or not, just by working for the same company. I’m willing to bet there were accountants who were doing the right thing and supported the case against Lay et al. as best they could. But your statements would make them felons just like the top.
Oh, and Uncle Dave did not say they laid off the shenanigans. in fact he claims that the shenanigans are on-going, based on a stupid statement by the president of the company made in 2004 and thoroughly addressed to the satisfaction of everyone except the conspiracy nuts. Uncle Dave and those who make the same argument only discredit themselves (and the organizations for which they speak).
#24 I quite clearly said that what I was reporting was based on information that came to me through several people. They are people I trust and I trust that there is truth in what they told me. However, I cannot give you detailed sources. I have no problem with you disbelieving me. Skepticism is good and it’s something I support. I posted it because it’s what I believe. However, I have been clear to say that it’s speculative, unlike some of the egregious hyperbole that others deal in, claiming conspiracy and evil.
Personally, I think the management of Diebold is too dumb to do this kind of thing and get away with it, but if Uncle Dave wants them to be evil geniuses, so be it.
#33: You win. No one apparently has proven they were trying to influence elections. There is only the appearance of wanting to since their products seem to have been designed to make doing so easy as research and testing has shown.
If they were deliberately designed to allow fraud, there are two possible reasons why that didn’t appear. First, far too many people voted against the desired choice and overwhelmed the fraud. Second, and more likely, all the attention on the issue made it too dangerous to attempt to do what everyone is looking for.
But without proof of wrongdoing, assuming there was no intent, there is no other alternative (and you haven’t presented any) than they are simply incompetent.
You know, what’s really disturbing is that among other things, Diebold also manufactures ATM machines that we all entrust our financial access to on a regular basis.
I think that’s where Diebold went wrong. They are probably quite good at making ATM machines, but the operations of voting machines is different. The biggest difference is that if something goes wrong, the bank has a paper trail to oversee everything. This is not possible with the voting machines, because we have a secret ballot. Also, the ATM machines don’t have to be programmed at each bank with a different menu for each location, so they don’t have to allow for easy access.
#37, Also the banks control the code. That is something Diebold refuses to allow the election officials even to see.
Who controls if there is no cheating on electronic voting. Isn’t it a little to easy for people who are in higher position to control the voting on there advantage?