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.”
Its called the paper ballot. It’s a very simple concept. That paired with showing your ID at the polls would eliminate 99% of problems. But than again, I may be using too much sense for some people.
It’s about time. See also http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/rss.php?a=2483
I’m all for the paper ballot This all started because that paper ballots were discriminatory to certain Americans. They were too complicated. Also there’s “hanging chads”. Somebody please make up your minds(?).
So Uncle Dave…Diebold delivered votes to its friends according to you…show me or tell me where…give me some details, otherwise I think you should chill the hyperbole a bit.
an addendum –
Believe it or not you have at least one reader who has friends/family who work for Diebold Election Systems and are doing the best job they can very conscientiously. Seeing such a slanderous statement from a place I respected makes me sick. I have no problems with the story, but the lead-in is disgusting.
I agree with you #5. This blog is becoming nothing but a liberal propaganda rag.
I suggest we also ask Canada, Britain or some other country with a non-corrupt government to monitor our elections.
How about just a show of hands. Or even better, dueling with pistols.
#7
1) no government is free of corruption; and the larger it gets, the more prone to corruption it becomes.
2) due to the proliferation of media outlets and information access, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were in one of the least corrupt (relatively speaking) periods in our history.
Yeah, the lead is slanted (again). More important to me though, is who is doing the illustrations like that one that you guys are using? They’re very good.
#4: So, is the president of Diebold saying he will in writing good enough?
#5: Two points: First, I don’t know your friend and he could very well be blameless in all this. Doesn’t mean the management isn’t up to no good. Second, as a former programmer, having read how easy it is to hack the system and how, and given how a voting machine isn’t even close to being as complicated as even, say, ATMs which have been hack proof for a long time, I have to wonder if something isn’t going on within the company to ensure they are hackable. Either that or the programmers are staggeringly incompetent. Show me (and all the states and now federal governement) a reason to believe otherwise and I will change my opinion.
BTW, I find it interesting that the word ‘friends’ is assumed to be referring to Republicans. I chose the word precisely because it didn’t state whom those friends were.
#10: Amazing the images you can find searching Google.
#5 Jeff: It doesn’t necessarily have to be a Diebold lprogrammer who manipulates the vote totals. It is more likely to be a poll worker. From: http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/15595.html
At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A “zero report” was run indicating zero votes on the memory card. In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes.
The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied “ender card” was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine.
Correct results should have been: Yes:2 ; No:6
However, just as Hursti had planned, the results tape read: Yes:7 ; No:1
The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into the GEMS central tabulator, a step cited by Diebold as a protection against memory card hacking. The central tabulator is the “mother ship” that pulls in all votes from voting machines. However, the GEMS central tabulator failed to notice that the voting machines had been hacked.
The results in the central tabulator read:
Yes:7 ; No:1
#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.
Your accusation smears everyone who works there, top to bottom, because the people on the bottom would need to be complicit to accommodate the management hijinks.
I don’t care or dispute how crappy their management is. My concern is those who work where the rubber meets the road. Your statement tars them with the same brush.
Further, as far as the President of the company goes, you are basing this on very old information. You need to catch up with the times. Diebold dealt with his stupid statement a long time ago.
There are any number of things that are worse than Diebold if you look into this at all. You betray a very shallow knowledge of what you write about by not showing any knowledge of any other vendors or pieces of this.
Want scary? There is NO mandate for voter registration database standards. I know of dead people who voted recently because of this. This doesn’t negate the bad parts of e-voting, but for some reason it’s completely ignored by folks such as yourself.
#14, so you know of people who voted in place of dead people? I certainly hope you notified the authorities because voter fraud is a Federal offense. By not notifying the Authorities you are ‘aiding and abetting’ voter fraud.
You want the rest of us to do what is right, so I hope you will too.
#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. This was a lawsuit where the head of Black Box Voting got listed as an expert witness in the beginning. After testifying he was downgraded by the judge to witness, and the judge wound up dismissing him entirely not too long after. The case wound up being dismissed in large part due to his incompetence, even though parts of it were entirely legitimate in my opinion.
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.
I have been waiting and wondering…..
What happened to the hundreds of stories of voter fraud, intimidation, disenfranchisement, yadda, yadda, yadda. As soon as the Democrats swung the pendulum from a little to the right to a little to the left, all of the protesters rolled up their cute little signs and the lawyers packed up and went home. The week before the election the bought-and-paid-for media were wailing about the inequities of unfair voter ID requirements. Voting machines that can’t be trusted. In 2000 and 2004 we heard for weeks how the election was stolen. Law suites. Investigations.
Congratulations are in order. No voter intimidation this year. The machines all worked. No disenfranchisement. Didn’t hear of anyone being turned away. Did we fix all of the problems over the weekend before the election? I don’t think so. I think the party that lost accepted the loss. That the way it is supposed to work. A lesson many of the political whiners in this country should learn.
GOOD!!!!!
They need to put those hackable machines in the dump, where they, and Diebold belong! As far as I am concerned, the government should penalize Diebold for coming up with a second rate system that can easily be hacked by a 13 year old. After the Secretary of State from Ohio said that he would “Deliver Ohio to Bush at any cost,” that should have woke some people up. But Nooooooo! They had to wait for the people to complain.
Now that the current administration feels threatened by possible investigations, they want to make nice. We should investigate EVERYTHING! Then let the chips fall where they may.
As far as those of you who don’t believe that there was any voter intimidation in 2006, just look here: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/07/voter-intimidation-virginia/
Get rid of these crooks, and put them in jail!
When they had some of these touch screens rigged with paper ballots, and did test recounts, it turns out the hand counts were off by 2%. The machines did better than the hand counts, as expected. Nevertheless, I think dumping the machines is probably a good idea. Why not just use optical scanning of paper ballots?
I think that these states that adopted these EVM’s were foolish. My state replaced the 3 old traditional voting booths at my polling place with 12 voting stands to fill out a real simple optical scan ballot. The line now forms at the table to check off your name and get the ballot. Last election I was in and out in ten minutes including a dozen referendums. These scanners are simple, tough, and should last for dozens of elections. And, the paper ballot is stored inside in case of a manual recount is required. I heard that the elimination of the storage fees for the old voting booths had returned enough money to pay for the new machines.