Diebold up to no good in NC

[Kelvin Mace]

The state board of elections has just hired an ex-Diebold employee named Keith Long to help decide which voting machines we will use in the future. Long also has a previous history with Hart-Intercivic and Sequoia. His main claim to fame though, is his involvement with deploying Diebold hardware in Georgia and Maryland.

Last Friday was the deadline for sealed bids for new voting equipment for the entire state. Diebold went to court and got a temporary restraining order to extend the deadline to this Monday and to wave any penalities for failing to comply with new disclosure laws recently imposed by the state.

Details on my site. Feel free to cut and paste to here, as I am pressed for time and don't have time for a long complicated post.

David Allen
www.thoughtcrimes.org

[texpatriot2004]

1. Live FREE or Diebold.n.t

[paparush]

2. LMAO!!

Shaking my head in disgust at my home state, but still LMAO @ "Live free or Diebold!"

[Kelvin Mace]

10. I love it. A new edition for my sig line.

here are some past ones:


Diebold, Inc.
Makers of voting stations with an unprecedented level of crappy security!



Diebold AccuVote Ingredients

Taxpayer money......................$5000
Security Flaws........................328
Critical Security Flaws................26
CEO commitments to deliver
election to GOP.........................1
Tamper-proof Paper ballots..............0
Tamper-friendly digital
ballots...................At least 32,000
Your actual vote....None of your business.

[Javaman]

33. dyed-balls. n/t

[Hissyspit]

3. Kick. Let's keep an eye on them, folks. nt

[RagingInMiami]

4. I wonder what John Edwards has to say about this

[KoKo]

5. kick..........

[ladjf]

6. Diebold should be suspended from doing business until

a thorough and impartial and official evaluation is made of their hardware and software. Our Democracy could depend on this outcome.

[Kelvin Mace]

11. Well, we are looking for a lawyer. I just got the court motion

and am digesting it.

[ladjf]

13. Wonderful. Let me know if I can be of any assistance.

[steveofwalmart]

7. disturbing

disturbing all this. what the rest of the world continues to dare not to imagine - has the US experienced a coup in 2004 election?

[newyawker99]

12. Hi steveofwalmart!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Clark2008]

14. Hi Steveofwalmart.

:hi:

Hope you know your name will be picked apart. Not many DUers (myself included) can stomach Wal-mart.

But you're most welcome here anyway. Tis the BIG tent. :7

[RaleighNCDUer]

23. Nah.

The coup was in 2000.

[marions ghost]

8. see how they do it folks...?

see what happens when one party owns the voting machines.

[leftchick]

9. shit shit shit

triple shit. :cry:

[KatieB]

15. So how do we stop this due to conflict of interest?

And who hired him?

[Kelvin Mace]

22. We are working on it. I am posting more

to my web site as it becomes available. I am now posting letters from Cathy Cox to Diebold (courtesy of Roxanne Jekot) outlining problems that occurred during Long's tenure.

[philb]

16. N. Carolina didn't have a real election in 2004; and those in control

want to keep it that way probably

http://www.flcv.com/northcar.html

[texpatriot2004]

17. We had this same problem in Harris County (Houston, TX)

Straight party ticket voters don’t get vote counted for President, resulting large number of undervotes

[Nikki Stone 1]

18. kick

:kick:

[KoKo]

19. It's being "worked on."

Believe me on this......

It's always one step forward and two steps back and look over your shoulder for the knife with the Bushie crowd, but we are onto them.

All folks in every state who are working for Verifiable Paper Ballots and Election Reform need to be aware...THEY ...just NEVER GIVE UP. But, now that we are onto them...WE WON'T EITHER!!!

[KatieB]

20. I just sent an email asking for an investigation to all my NC state

senators and to the governor...
We got verifiable paper ballots in NC but the guy at the helm of our Board of Elections (Bartlette) does not pass the smell test at all. Diebold used a law suit to get into the bid and then is refusing to identify who their programmers are. W/O that info, any company can be fined under our new state rules.

[Kelvin Mace]

21. I've done a read through on the court filing

so keep in mind that this is a layman's take on a legal document.

Diebold seems to have gotten upset over the provision of the law that states they must turn over all source code that is used on their product. Diebold sent a query for clarification to the SBoE asking in essence "what about Windows?".

The SBoE answers by repeating the law and adding that any code not included must "indicate in the RFP response all that is not available and why it is not available".

Now in the real world, must people would understand this to mean "not Windows", but we are dealing with corporate lawyers.

Now, at this point, I must confess that I *can* understand Diebold's caution since "willful violation" of the act is a felony (hey, we fought hard to put teeth in the law), and the term "willfully" is subject to interpretation by the state, it would give me pause and a request for clarification. Diebold did request clarification and rather than addressing the issue, SBoE decided to be inscrutable.

(If Don Wright, the SBoE counsel, had anything to do with this, then I can see why it was answered this way. Wright has no use for the law and thinks we shouldn't pester vendors with silly requirements to deal with the voting public transparently.)

That said, they are also protesting a requirement that they provide the names and addresses of all programmers who worked on the software, which I do not recall being discussed in committee (could be a faulty memory or cerebral numbness caused by hours of parsing pages and pages of legalese).

A reporter friend has suggested that "...seeking "declaratory judgment" right off the bat, as opposed to after discovery, is frequently translatable as, 'Both parties are confused as hell about what the law is here, but because the rules of civil procedure don't let us just come jointly ask the court for an interpretation, one of us is suing the other so as to create a basis for a ruling.' Not sure that that's the case here without reading the docs, but that could be what's going on."

So, rather than consult with the committee who drafted the law for clarification on intent, the SBoE has decided to collude with the vendor and push the matter into court for interpretation. I would be a LOT more understanding of such an action if we had excluded the SBoE from drafting the law, but two members of the SBoE, inclining the Director, sat on the committee with us while the law was being drafted. You would think that if they had a question about such things they would have asked THEN rather than NOW.

You can read the filing here:

http://www.thoughtcrimes.org/s9/doc_files/DieboldCourtDocs.pdf

[marions ghost]

24. 'we shouldn't pester vendors with silly requirements'

:wtf:

please update when you can, kelvin mace

[Balbus]

25. So I guess your point is that there's no use to even voting...

I swear, these paranoiod-based conspiracy theories do more to suppress the vote than any fraudulent scheme could even come close to accomplishing.

[Boredtodeath]

26. That would be paranoid

And could you please explain how reading and intrepreting a legal filing could be seen as "paranoid?"

Hmmm...seems we have a new Diebold agenda developing - accuse any one questioning electronic voting as disenfranchising voters. Oh, wait...that's an old tactic, just resurected since all other defense has failed, I guess.....

[Balbus]

27. Easy question:

If there's evidence - where's the indictments?

[hunter]

28. Why is it too much to ask for voting machines that aren't stupid?

Voting machines should produce a voter verified paper ballot that is counted by hand or read by optical scanners that don't have enough processing power to cheat.

When using optical scanners, a statistically significant number of paper ballots should be randomly selected and counted by hand to make sure the optical scanners are working properly.

You can see a paper ballot with your own eyes, and you can see when someone is trying to cheat. Counting votes stored invisibly in electronic media is just stupid, and invites fraud. You can't see the electronic votes travelling about inside a machine.

The original Diebold software was crap. A lot of people here saw it. The new Diebold software is certainly crap too, which is why they don't want anyone to see it.

I don't believe there are many people who refuse to vote because they think these electronic voting machines are insecure.

Most people who don't vote think the entire political game is fraudulent, and that there really is no difference between the various candidates and positions.

The United States has a rich history of election fraud. I think it would be very worthwhile to have voting machines that could not be tampered with. The current crop of touchscreen voting machines doesn't even come close to that obvious standard.

The "paper trail" now required in some states is an improvement, but still lacks the security of an actual paper ballot, especially when no adequate and mandatory auditing procedures are required by law.

Whatever your intentions might be, Balbus, it's probably best not to accuse people who survived the BBV flamewars here of trying to suppress the democratic vote.

I hope you take some time to investigate these issues further.

[Balbus]

29. Whether the conspiracy-theorists purpose is to suppress the vote

or not, that's what's being accomplished. Case in point:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2234789

This person actually took the time to drive all the way down there and then give up... How many people sat at home and said to themselves, "I'm not wasting my time going down there - it won't count anyway..."

But back to my original question, if there's so much substantial evidence to prove that vote tampering exists, where are the indictments? And I don't want to hear any crap about who controls congress, white house, courts, etc, etc, etc. Fitzgerald was able to bring about an investigation and an indictment with the Repubs in control. You'd think with a case of national election fraud it would be that much easier - if there was evidence, of course.

[Kelvin Mace]

31. Question

Where do I accuse anyone of vote tampering?

I question the propriety of the state of NC hiring a man with ties to a voting machine company (that he worked for THIS year) being hired to help the state select a voting machine.

I question his claim that he supervised a "successful" deployment of 22,000 voting machines in Georgia by providing documentation that there were major problems with the deployment.

I question the actions of counsel for the SBoE who I have had personal dealings with appearing to refuse to put up a defense against Diebold's filing, in essence throwing in the towel and not standing by a state law passed to ensure accountability of voting machine vendors, a group of people who cost the state over a million dollars last year because of the failure of a voting machine in one county that lost 4000 votes affecting a close race and resulting in much court expense and uncertainty. The company in question didn't pay a nickel for their mistake.

Look as I might, I cannot find any place I accuse anyone of ballot tampering.

[hunter]

32. Oh for goodness sakes...

A certain number of democrats don't vote because their cars get flat tires. Where are the Republicans who are flattening these tires? Where are the indictments? I demand indictments!

I myself made a big fuss at my polling place, but I still voted. I would expect others to do the same.

I also think the huge fuss I've been making these last few years to my own election officials, both locally and in Sacramento, has contributed in some small way to the the few protections we enjoy in California.

The touchscreen voting machines in my county all have printers, and it is only because we fought for them.

I'm not sure why contractors such as Diebold think it's okay to deliver their crappy and insecure products to the public, and I'm not sure why anyone like yourself would defend them in any way.

Fearful people are afraid the world will fall apart if they yell out loudly how the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. But perhaps a world led by naked and corrupt emperors needs to fall apart.

Most of all, I don't think we need to look for indictments to prove there is something fishy going on with touchscreen voting. The voting machine makers keep getting caught with their pants down, and we keep calling them on it:

http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/downloads/Bruce-DieboldMcPhersonLetter.pdf

I'd consider myself a total weenie if I put up with any of the crap the touchscreen voting machine makers give us for fear of scaring away a few voters.

[Kelvin Mace]

34. Funny how he doesn't address my points,

ain't it?

[Kelvin Mace]

30. A clarification

I do NOT deal in "conspiracy theories. I disagree as politely as possible with those who feel wholesale "rigging" has taken place. That said, I do question:

- Improper relations between BBV vendors and election officials.
- Poor security
- Shoddy programming

While I AM concerned about security and the possibility of tampering, the greater threat is simple failure of these systems due to poor coding, poor training and inferior hardware.

A software bug does not have to be part of a grand conspiracy to throw an election.