Warning -Diebold email to NC Election Directors and Commissioners

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

This is an actual email sent by a Diebold Sales-rep to all NC County Election Directors, some county commissioners, even some private individuals.
We offer our rebuttal in italics

-----Original Message-----
From: Diebold Election Systems (MLR)
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 11:51 AM
To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; 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Subject: Diebold Election Systems Maufacturing Update
Importance: High

Diebold Election Systems is the only election system company that manufactures its products in its own manufacturing facilities in the United States. In fact, jurisdictions in North Carolina have a special benefit when working with Diebold Election Systems because their voting systems are manufactured in their own backyard, Lexington, North Carolina.

After the purchase of the machines, when it really counts, election officials find themselves dealing with logistics issues --

The service on Diebold equipment is performed in Texas

Who programs the ballots - if you pay the vendor to do it, you will have to send them to Nebraska.

What about local company support in the event of problems on election day - If it is not already covered in your contract - you specifically pay Diebold to send someone. (1 sales rep and 1 subcontracted service rep)*That is no guarantee that all will go well, Gaston County hired a Diebold Technician to upload voting results on Nov 2, 2004 and somehow over 13,200 votes were not counted. http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=3861

Who prints ballots? (For absentee voting, optical scan voting) many find it more feasible to have local (in-state) printers handle this.


Manufacturing plant in Lexington, NC


The Diebold AccuVote-TSX touch screen and AccuVote-OS optical scan voting systems are manufactured in Lexington to ISO-9000 quality standards. The plant has an excellent track record of producing high quality, reliable products that are used throughout the country. Election officials throughout the country have stated they feel strongly that Help America Vote Act federal funding should be used to implement products that are actually made in America.

Regardless of where they are made -- Diebold Voting machines fail dramatically in real life test in California in July 2005: 'The original report of the testing was under-reported. Now they are reporting nearly 20% failure rate and changing the emphasis from the printer to "crashes". 19 machines had 21 blue screen crashes with error messages. 10 machines had 11 printer jams. One third of the machines had a problem. That's on a total of 96 machines tested. http://www.insidebayarea.com/argus/localnews/ci_2909663


Diebold’s touch screen solutions, installed throughout the entire state of Georgia, provided the most significant reduction in residual vote count in the country (nine-fold), from 3.5% in 2000 to 0.39% in 2004. Our touch screen systems in Maryland produced the overall lowest residual vote count in the country. More than 1,000 jurisdictions use Diebold’s touch screen and optical scan systems to accurately conduct successful elections.

What is Diebold's definition of a residual vote? Most people think that an undervote is a race for which no vote is cast. However, Diebold uses a different definition, which allows their undervote rate to be much lower.
When Diebold counts undervotes, they only count races in which voters can select multiple candidates to fill multiple offices, and then only if the voter failed to select the maximum number of candidates allowed. Using this definition, a race for President would never have undervotes. Diebold refers to an unrecorded choice in such a race as a "blank vote" -- not an "undervote." So if someone claims that DREs have fewer "undervotes" than other systems, this may mean nothing. What should be asked is whether they mean "undervotes" or "blank votes", since the terminology may not be standard.
1. From GEMS User Guide Revision 3, Version 1.17.15; July 3, 2001, Glossary: "Undervoted Race: A race with less candidates selected than the number to vote for; cannot be a vote for 1 race."
2. Op cit. Pg. 2-61 in the AccuVote-OS (Op Scan) Options section: "Undervotes apply only to races with a number to vote for greater than 1 – an unvoted race with number to vote for 1 is considered blank voted."
3. From Diebold Election Systems Election Support Guide, Revision 1.0, Oct. 21, 2002: Section 5 "Election Day" "Remember that 'undervoting' in industry is generally considered to be no candidate selection or less candidates selected than the number to vote for, while we consider undervoting to be the latter only."


To date, Diebold has manufactured almost 100,000 voting units in the Lexington manufacturing facility, and we are very proud to be a part of the North Carolina manufacturing business community. Diebold employs nearly 400 associates throughout North Carolina and has additional offices in Charlotte and Raleigh.

There have been some recent articles about Diebold buying a plant in India (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1189907.cms) where they could make ATMs. Would it take long for them to begin making voting machines there? Probably not long at all.

We invite you to visit our state-of-the-art Lexington manufacturing facility. We will be scheduling tour dates beginning in September, so you can review Diebold’s quality manufacturing process in action. Please do not hesitate to contact us for any additional information or to set up your Lexington facility tour.

We look forward to meeting with you soon!

08/20/2005 Diebold hires top Dem for PR blitz

Former party chairman make the case for voting to California
``Even if you have tremendous success every place else,'' said Andrew, ``if you can't sell technology in California, you're in trouble.''

But in California, Diebold can't sell its touchscreen voting machine, the AccuVote TSx, nor can counties that bought thousands of the machines in 2003 use them in elections.

More than $30 million worth of TSx machines sit in three counties'
warehouses, unapproved for actual voting. More than $15 million worth of earlier-generation Diebold touchscreens in Alameda, Los Angeles and Plumas counties cannot be used after January...

Former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley suggested criminal prosecution, citing misleading statements by Diebold Election Systems executives and ``reprehensible'' tactics. The state joined a false-claims suit against the company and won a $2.5 million settlement.

Last month, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson cited poor performance in state testing, with paper jams and software crashes in 28 percent of machines used in a mock election.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_2958901


Buck Jones- 803.351.7767

Robert Pickett- 336.886.3409

Also posted at this web-page:
http://www.ncvoter.net/diebold.html

[drduffy]

1. what the hell?

i talked with burke country vote registrar a couple of months ago and I was led to believe the state had rejected dieboshit machines because they wanted a paper trail. I guess I better call him again.

[flyingfysh]

3. ISO-9000 is a joke

All it means is that the process is thoroughly documented. A company making concrete canoes could get ISO-9000 certification.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

4. Diebold now has toilet paper ballot, so legal

NC now requires voter verified paper ballots, since S 223 passed in August of 2005.

However, Diebold - master of screwing up elections, has gotten a paper ballot on a reel (toilet paper ballot), and most likely will be certified in North Carolina, even though it is not fully disabled accessible.

HAVA requires accessible voting to people with physical disabilities, not just for the blind.

Diebold only assists the blind.

The Automark, used with optical scan is very accessible, and would be the correct solution.

We have some republican officials who want Diebold for obvious reasons, and some gullible people who don't know better.

Please guard your county, send them the email from my webpage and ask them not to put your county at the risk of what other states have gone through.

[In Truth We Trust]

2. Kick- Paper ballots NOW! Hand count NOW!