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Diebold Demands That HBO Cancel Documentary
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Nov 02, 2006 06:21 PM
from the because-we-say-so dept.
from the because-we-say-so dept.
Frosty Piss writes "According to the Bloomberg News, Diebold Inc. is insisting that HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair. The program, 'Hacking Democracy,' is scheduled to debut Thursday, five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims that Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results. 'Hacking Democracy' is 'replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting,' says Diebold. 'We stand by the film," said a spokesman for HBO. 'We have no intention of withdrawing it from our schedule. It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing.'"
Related Stories
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Interviews: Ask a "Star" of HBO's Voting Machine Documentary 342 comments
Herbert H. Thompson, PhD ("Hugh" to his friends), is one of the people featured in the HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy, that Diebold tried to keep from airing. Hugh is a long-time Slashdot reader who called me to volunteer for this interview — on his own, not through anyone's PR department. Here's a YouTube excerpt from a CNN Lou Dobbs show with Hugh in it. (Find more articles by and about Hugh here. And perhaps check this brand-new MSNBC story about e-voting, too.) Hugh suggests that you give him "your wildest questions about what went on behind the scenes and how safe the e-voting systems actually are." Let's take him up on that challenge, hopefully while following Slashdot interview rules. Note to Diebold and other voting machine companies: We welcome comments and questions from you, same as we welcome them from everyone else. If you feel you are being vilified unfairly by Slashdot readers, please respond and set the record straight.
[+]
Politics: HBO's Hacking Democracy Available Online 350 comments
prostoalex writes "HBO's controversial special 'Hacking Democracy' on issues with Diebold voting machines is now available in full on Google Video." Covered earlier on Slashdot, the documentary seems to have gathered quite a bit of heat from Diebold in addition to the one that didn't air.
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Thanks Diebold! (Score:3)
I love publicity-bringing lawsuits, don't you?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Thanks Diebold! (Score:4, Funny)
Don't expect a lawsuit to come of this. That would mean discovery.
KFG
Parent
Power! BTW: Order your Diebold parts now. (Score:5, Interesting)
LOL. MOD PARENT UP. I love the feeling of power that technically knowledgeable people have. And it is increasing. (I'm not suggesting that anything illegal be done; I just love the feeling of knowing how things work.)
Talking about power, anyone need Diebold parts [diebold.com]? You must have an account with them, but hey, no problem, right? Just tell the local elections boss, "Oh yes, we'll need two of those fazongas immediately." Response: "Well, if you say so, order them now." Check out the memory card at $155.00 for 128 MB. Ohhh, it's "industrial grade". Well, all right.
Off topic: Did you know that George W. Bush had a top-of-the-charts song written about him? The song, "American idiot" [wikipedia.org], was number 1 on the music charts in Canada, number 3 in Britain, and in the top 10 in many other countries. No matter whether you vote Democrat or Republican, you'll have to admit that is amazing.
--
Funniest George W. Bush Comedy Videos [futurepower.org]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Deibold should place a warning on their website... (Score:2)
And the People deserve better researched voting methods and ones that aren't error riddled as the Diebold machines have proven to be. Diebold should be required to have warnings on their machines and paper ballot stations nearby.
Let the people decide which is
about to backfire.. (Score:5, Informative)
Regarding Diebold's claims, although the article is a little short on facts, for instance, following this section, "According to Byrd's letter, inaccuracies in the film include the assertion that Diebold, whose election systems unit is based in Allen, Texas, tabulated more than 40 percent of the votes cast in the 2000 presidential election."
Furthermore, the article is short on explanation, but I don't think this is just a crass comment, "It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing."
On a personal note, I am a documentarian, and no documentary can ever be completely "true" to everyone. Laymen make the mistake of thinking to shoot a documentary you just point some cameras at stuff, edit it, and voila. But there is so much more than that.. a documentary is about capturing the "truth" the documentarian sees. For (s)he to use cameras and mics to tell the story that (s)he saw. There is always some bias in this, and one important trick to being a good documentarian is divorcing yourself from this bias as much as possible.
Fear of being sued??? (Score:2)
a documentary is about capturing the "truth" the documentarian sees more likely a domcumenary is about stacking up "evidence" to support the documentarian's point of view.
Re: (Score:2)
You are correct. I'm a case in point.
I saw the headline, immediately queued it up on the Tivo, and only then came back to rtfa and comments.
Re:about to backfire.. (Score:5, Interesting)
For the record, Diebold has only been in the election machine business since 2001. They only make direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines, and have never produced paper ballot readers or any other equipment other than electronic machines and electronic pollbooks. Here is a good historical overview [cnn.com] of Diebold's election activities.
There are a number of points that are completely missed or misunderstood in the discussion of election hardware, and why so many jurisdictions have moved to such questionable devices. The story of what has happened is a case study in how the federal government creates a royal mess from good intentions.
After the debacle of Florida 2000 Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was designed to prevent such a thing from happening again. Of course the problems in Florida were not caused by faulty election equipment but by poorly designed ballots.
Of all the parts to the eqatuation in FL 2000 (voting machines, ballots, election process, registration, administration, etc) it was the ballots that were at fault, and the administration of the resulting dispute that created the big issue. I still believe that if Al Gore had accepted (or insisted upon) a statewide recount of Florida rather than trying to game county-level results he would have won Florida, and the presidency.
Instead the POTUS (President of the US) was effectively elected by the Supreme Court. And that led rather directly to HAVA -- a federal law wherein the federal government assumes authoritah over the states on issues concerning election procedures, quite contrary to strict readings of the Constitution.
The Constitution clearly gives the states power to handle their own electoral affairs, but at the same time gives the federal government power to distribute funds, and to set requirements on the distribution. Through HAVA, Washington pledges a ton of money to each state and local jusrisdiction to upgrade their election hardware to something that is compliant with HAVA, but the requirements only apply to election for federal office -- ie President and Congress. But since it's too much trouble to maintain separate election system for fedreal and local offices, and too much money to ignore, all states are scrambling towards HAVA compliance.
Diebold comes in because of a rather ill-thought clause in HAVA -- Section 301. This requires that HAVA-compliant hardware meet the needs of blind voters in allowing them to 1) cast a ballot without assistance, and 2) to review and change ballot selections before casting the ballot.
As of 2000, blind voters cast ballots with the assistance of two election judges (in jurisdictions that did not require Braille ballots). HAVA requires that all blind voters have audio ballots. Which means many effective and accurate voting systems and procedures are no longer valid.
Once HAVA was passed, Diebold saw a business opportunity in US election systems (they had previously sold electyion hardware to Brazil). Diebold could certainly deliver counting machines with audio capability, and naturally they theough that security requirements for ATMs were analogous to those for election systems.
The points of this whole rant are 1) Diebold gets a lot of deserved blame for producing faulty hardware [securityfocus.com], and a lot of undeserved blame for commiting mass electoral fraud [scoop.co.nz] (remember that they didn't have any election hardware in 2000); 2) All DRE machines (with or without paper trail) are subject to problems and errors; and 3) the voting process is sound, even if the equipment has flaws.
Make sure you vote on November 7, make sure if you're using a DRE machine that your vote is properly recorded, and make sure you have some sympathy for the sorely undertrained and underpaid election judges at your precinct.
And don't complain if you don't vote.
Parent
Gore tried to follow the law and paid for it (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree wholeheartedly. These people have been through the fire, figuratively speaking, and they should have their votig rights restored. Treating them with some semblance of dignity, respect, and reacceptance after their incarceration could even help them integrate into normal society. That is unless you feel that "rehabilitation" is synonymous with "lifelong ostracism" as many people do.
It is outrag
Apparently I'm not (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, here's the actual tallies from the NORC recount.
-PREVAILING STANDARD: County election officials told Florida journalists how they would define votes
if required to do a recount and in this scenario the majority standard was imposed statewide. In
punch-card counties, ballots with at least one corner of a chad detached counted as votes. In optical
scan counties, where voters are required to fill in blanks on a paper ballot - like on a standardized
test - ballots with any affirmative marks counted. That means a vote counted even if the oval was not
completely filled in or a candidate's name was circled or underlined; so did ballots on which a voter
correctly filled in the oval and also wrote the same candidate's name in the space for write-ins.
Result: Gore ahead by 60 votes.
-TWO-CORNER STANDARD: At least two corners of a chad must be detached to count as a vote, a position
that had been argued, at times, by Bush supporters. Same as prevailing standard for optical scan
ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 105 votes.
-MOST INCLUSIVE: Ballots with dimpled chads count as votes, an argument often made by Gore supporters.
Same as prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 107 votes.
-LEAST INCLUSIVE: Only cleanly punched chads count as valid votes. For optical scan, only fully filled
ovals and those ballots on which a voter filled in the oval and wrote in the candidate's name, too.
Result: Gore ahead by 115 votes.
-COUNTY-by-COUNTY: Drawn from the county election officials. It accepts results from Broward and
Volusia counties because those counties completed hand counts that were included in state-certified
election totals. For those counties that said they would not count overvotes, relies on prevailing
standard.
Result: Gore ahead by 171 votes.
-PALM BEACH STANDARD: Based on a standard Palm Beach election officials briefly used, this counts
dimpled chads as valid votes if a pattern of dimpled chads exists elsewhere on the same ballot. Same as
prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 42 votes.
Here's some media reaction from the time:
A close examination of the ballots suggests that more Floridians attempted to choose
Gore over Bush.
-- Chicago Tribune
Gore would have won most recount scenarios that included "overvotes," ballots that
showed votes for more than one candidate. Democrats long have contended that a plurality of Florida voters intended to cast
their ballots for Gore but that thousands spoiled their votes because of confusing instructions, badly
designed ballots or other obstacles. The study adds evidence to bolster that case.
-- LA Times
One of the most compelling questions since the election has been: Who would have won
if all the uncounted ballots were hand-counted using the same standards? If that had happened using the counting methods most widely used in the state, the
study shows, Bush would have gotten an extra 3,607 votes, Gore an extra 4,204 -- giving Gore the state
by a scant 60-vote margin.
-- Orlando Sentinel
But if Gore had found a way to trigger a statewide recount of all disputed ballots,
or if the courts had required it, the result likely would have been different. An examination of
uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the
Parent
Got a better... (Score:2)
Re:Got a better... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes: 25%
No: 21%
Republican: 54%
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The lady doth... (Score:2)
oh what a terrible injustice (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Um... you notice that this has NOTHING to do with whether Diebold is "demanding" that any jurisdiction, anywhere, actually use their equipment? Did you vote for the people who are now running the election board in your county? What brand of equipment did they choose to use?
Already discussed on the BRAD BLOG (Score:2, Informative)
posturing implies admission of guilt (Score:2, Insightful)
Anything else is just posturing, and should be treated (read: ignored) as such.
Now this being Slashdot, I think we all know how we feel about whether or not their machines are secure.
Open Voting System (Score:5, Interesting)
Source code is 100% open to find exploits and bugs, when you vote you're given a ticket with a number, anyone can go online and see how everyone voted but only you are able to tell which vote was yours by the corresponding ticket number. That'd allow for everyone to do their own count if they wanted.
I've just don't like technology getting a bad name because people abuse it. An electronic voting system would be more secure then a paper trail with PEOPLE manually counting each vote.
No?
No (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Which is also a good justification for open electronic voting; not only could all parties watch for fraud, everyone could watch for fraud so long as they were willing to learn about the system.
Electronic voting is not the problem. Closed source electronic voting, that is the problem. Sadly, the media is only phrasing the problem in terms of "electronic or not electronic?" So if the choic
Re:Open Voting System (Score:5, Insightful)
While I understand the desire to know exactly how your vote was counted I think that having a paper trail that can be counted by humans would make it a lot harder to have widespread voter fraud. Even if you are given a encrypted key that only you know there is no reason that you should expect that what the computer tells you is what it counts in the tally. The ONLY way to be sure is to have two distinct methods for getting a count then comparing the statistical corroelations. You being able to check how you think you voted online doesn't tell you how the machine acutally tallied the votes.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Best of all, the 2 double-sided legal sized pieces of paper are a permanent, human-readable record. They count them with a machine and do limited hand-counts to sanity-check the results. If the election is close, they'll be entirely hand-counted.
If everyone voted absentee, we'd have no problems with
Re: (Score:2)
Only you, and your abusive spouse who beats you if you vote the "wrong" way, and the vote buyer who doesn't pay until you log in and prove that you delivered, and your pastor who warned everyone they'd be thrown out of the church if they didn't vote for his candidate (that is a real case from recent history), and your union rep who will skip you in the hiring hall unless you show your ticket number and vote, or your psycho
Re: (Score:2)
Verifiability (Score:2)
In principle it could provide unambiguous ballots, accurate counts, and as much audit trail as you could want or imagine.
In practice the systems aren't being bought with security as a criterion.
Also, hundreds of millions of people can judge the security and accuracy of a paper ballot system. The number of people who can spot off-by-one errors and exploitable memory corruption in 50+ KLoC is much smaller.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no guarantee that the code on the boxes is the same as the code on the web site.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's all they're refuting? (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, in the light of allegations of insecurity and the ease of which a Diebold DRE or tabulator (GEMS) can be modified, they nitpick the date in which they got into the voting machine industry.
Bravo, Diebold.
Also, the article's implication if I'm not mistaken is incorrect:
If I'm not mis-reading this passage, the article is implying that Florida ballots in 2000 raised questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines. The only problem is that the problems in Florida were due to "hanging chads" and the poor design of "butterfly ballots" in Palm Beach County, two problems which are entirely specific to paper voting methods. Maybe they meant to say "and raised questions about upgrading their voting technology" but who knows.
liar liar (Score:5, Funny)
Fletcher: Your honor, I object!
Judge: Why?
Fletcher: Because it's devastating to my case!
Judge: Overruled.
Fletcher: Good call!
Well... (Score:2)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if you do a German-to-English translation of "Diebold" on Babelfish, it comes back with "thief old".
Even worse, if you rearrange the letters of Diebold Election Systems, you get So Dems Lose Indetectibly.
Coincidence? You decide.
Parent
research (Score:2, Informative)
Irony (Score:2)
Get big media attention (Score:5, Interesting)
Try other big media outlets. We need the general public to become aware of this potential debacle before it's too late.
Forced to wonder... (Score:4, Funny)
Call that a flame or troll if you want (and I'm sure that politically-charged mods who love to abuse their mod privileges will be more than willing to do so); but with the collective hatred for anything republican on Slashdot, things have finally gotten to the point where any statements against Diebold are as knee-jerk or fashionable as the rampant anti-Microsoftism and anti-republicanism that we all see. They're almost as cliché as the "overlord" and "you insensitive clod" comments.
um, yeah, it's a real mystery (Score:4, Insightful)
- CEO promises to help Republicans win the vote
- CEO is actively involved in Bush re-election campaign
- CEO's company makes voting machine with no paper trail, no audit capability, no way at all to verify that the numbers being spit out are related to actual votes.
- Company's voting machines are used in states with close outcomes
- Company's voting machines are used in states whose election outcomes were starkly different from the straw polls, but the difference was not randomly distributed--the variation benefited only one political party, the very one the CEO promised to keep in office. Straw polls are mathematically reliable enough to be use to spot actual election fraud on other nations. Even if you don't consider them reliable, they are still used to spot election fraud, meaning statisticians do consider them reliable enough to analyze election results.
- People get suspicious
- People like you are suddenly mystified why the hell anyone would be skeptical. You can't think of any reason, any reason at all, why someone would be less than credulous about Diebold election machines.
It must be liberal bias, you say. Yep, liberal bias. Nothing to see here. Did you strike your head? I'm not calling you a flame or a troll--I'm calling you deliberately obtuse. Even if Diebold is in actuality as pure as the driven snow, even if in actuality their voting machines are not crooked, it still stinks to high heaven. There is EVERY reason to be skeptical. You have proven, admitted bias, plus a black-box voting scheme where it is (by design) possible to steal an election and not get caught, and then the results don't match the straw polls, the very polls that were considered reliable BEFORE your vote tallies didn't match them. Are you serious?Parent
Much harder (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially considering that the Dow isn't a good direct indicator of economic health. If you consider how well the dollar isn't doing, the DOW isn't doing that hot.
The Bush spend and spend fiscal policy has pushed the US debt to the greatest it's ever been. As Alan Greenspan tried to explain, increasing the national debt is the worst thing you can do for the economic health of the US. At least the Democrats want to balance the income and the outgo, as anybody with a pocketbook and a job should understand.
As far as the Republicans being tougher on terrorism: prove it. Prove that Iraq wasn't a distraction from real terrorism. Prove that Iraq didn't contribute to terrorism, as a recent intelligence report indicates.
So, assuming you weren't being obliquely ironic, you are a nard. If you were being all ironical and stuff, I apologize. I'm not in the most subtle of moods right now, as there are a lot of Bush apologists out there, considering he's an asshat with a terrible approval rating, and I'm really worried that Bush and his gang have fucked us over to the point of no recovery.
In any case, Allah Be With You.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually you said something rather juvenile and insipid. It doesn't really matter whether the machines are being used to favor democrats or republicans. I'm sure they get messed with by whomever happens to be running things in a particular district. The point is that they are bad for democracy. The implementations are
It's not who watches that counts.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not having seen it myself, I can't make any conclusions of my own, but if the reviews are accurate, this film does a disservice to the concept of secure voting by further validating the fringe/crackpot image that people already have regarding this issue.
The real news is that Diebold is so furious over such a vague "expose." What they should be doing is simply ignoring the whole thing, unless questioned specifically. By launching their own campaign against it, they're legitimizing the film -- which may actually be a good thing -- and giving it more attention than it may have otherwise received.
Personally, I think there are much bigger problems with the voting system than the machines that count the votes. Primaries, party politics, and campaign financing all throw much bigger wrenches into the gears than a couple of districts in Ohio that might have gotten shafted.
Check this out wow!! (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"pretty much stolen"? Is that like being kind of pregnant? Which is it? Are you confusing "didn't turn out the way I wished it would" with "stolen?"
Or do you mean "stolen" as in "trying to fake up thousands of democratic-leaning votes [kxma.com]?
A huge portion of the votes tabulated in Florida were done so on Diebold voting machines.
And no one has i
Re:Self-inflicted wounds........ (Score:5, Informative)
First off, you link to a new site which has reposted a blogger post from "Say Anything" blog - who apparently will say anything to make his point, even if it doesn't make sense. Most conclusions on his blog page are completely illogical.
The actual article to which you refer is here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/kmbc/20061102/lo_kmbc/102
and the leadership of ARORN had nothing to do with the fraud - they immediately fired the people involved.
Now contrast this to the litany of counter examples and suspicious patterns listed here:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/w
Parent
Re:Self-inflicted wounds........ (Score:4, Insightful)
The patterns in the exit-poll discrepancies that correlate with the use of electronic voting machines, the presence of Republican governors, and battle-ground states.
None of the various alternative hyphotheses that have been floated to explain this seem to hold water: e.g. were Bush fans reluctant to talk to pollsters? Answer no: it looks like there may have been some slight avoidance of pollsters on the part of Democrats.
Parent
Re:Self-inflicted wounds........ (Score:4, Insightful)
Or do you mean "stolen" as in "trying to fake up thousands of democratic-leaning votes?
And by "thousands" you mean "about eight"? From TFA:
And no one has indicated, once, that there was anything suspect about the actual results. Plenty wrong with the people actually understanding how to cast a vote, but that's rather a different thing, isn't it.
Really? [washingtonpost.com] That's news to me. And to respected statisticians who have looked at the results:
So, other than just repeating that meme, what's your actual evidence that what you're saying is actually true?
Oh, I don't know. Means, motive, and opportunity, perhaps? Results that just don't add up? An unfortunate history of election fraud in certain parts of the South? (this coming from someone born and raised in Virginia) Grounds, at the very least, to count the paper ballots (the practive of which Florida attempted to ban [internetnews.com] somewhat recently)?
What I smell is a frenzied effort to have, in pocket, a handy explanation for why fewer people that some political camps might wish will actually vote they way they're stamping their feet and insisting that they do.
Indeed. Damned partisan hacks stamping their feet and trying to block out reality. How dare they?
-jdm
Parent
Ahem! (Score:5, Interesting)
Tens of thousands of voters from poorer (usually Democratic) counties being erroneously included on a list of felons, thus not being allowed to vote. The list was compiled by a company in the employ of Republican campaigners.
Per-capita, older and fewer machines being sent to Democratic counties.
Unofficial recounts that indicate that Gore won.
State-initiated opposition to recount requests.
And the list goes on.
There's good, solid evidence the 2000 election was stolen, pure and simple. Whether it was intentional or not is another question. But there were more than enough anomalies without electronic voting to make it . . . irregular, to say the least.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"In Precinct lB of Gahanna, in Franklin County, a computerized voting machine recorded a total of 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 votes for Kerry. In that precinct, however, there are only 800 registered voters, of whom 638 showed up. Once the "glitch" had been identified, the president had to be content with 3,893 fewer votes than the computer had awarded him."
Though, admittedly, that can't really be called "suspect" so m