Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Diebold Goes 0 For 3 In Massachusetts Case

Posted by kdawson on Tue Apr 03, 2007 08:17 PM
from the help-america-litigate-act dept.
Government The Courts News Politics
beetle496 writes "ComputerWorld reports that last week a judge denied Diebold's request to block ES&S pact with Massachusetts. This is a follow-up to the earlier discussion here after Diebold contended that the state had erred in selecting the machines of its rival, citing accessibility provisions of the HAVA law. Quoting: 'Diebold's request for an injunction to block the execution of the contract with ES&S was rejected... The judge also denied Diebold's request to have an accelerated discovery process and to keep the state's legal team from viewing internal Diebold documents... "The suit is still there, but they went zero for three yesterday," the spokesman said.' The actual accessibility concerns have been discussed over at the TEITAC listserv, including a few telling observations from experts familiar with accessible voting and at least one state insider."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Your Rights Online: Diebold Sues Massachusetts for "Wrongful Purchase" 422 comments
elBart0 writes "Diebold has decided to sue the commonwealth of Massachusetts for choosing a competitor to provide voting machines for the disabled. Diebold wants to force the state to stop using the machines immediately, despite the upcoming municipal elections in many towns. The commonwealth chose the competitor based on an open process that included disabled groups. Diebold executives appeared confused when encountering election officials who made an intelligent choice."
[+] Politics: Ohio Audit Reveals More Diebold Problems 222 comments
armb writes with a link to a Wired Blog entry about irregularities found in Diebold databases from the state of Ohio. The election in question here is November 2006, and the corruption of the entries may raise doubts about accurate tabulations. "Vote totals in two separate databases that should have been identical had different totals. Although Diebold explained that this was part of the system design for separate vote tables to get updated at different times during the tabulation process, the team questioned the wisdom of a design that creates non-identical vote totals. Tables in the database contained elements that were missing date and time stamps that would indicate when information was entered. Entries that did have date/time stamps showed a January 1, 1970 date. The database is built from Microsoft's Jet database engine. The engine, according to Microsoft, is vulnerable to corruption when a lot of concurrent activity is happening with the database, such as what occurs on an election night when results are uploaded and various servers are interacting with the database simultaneously."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Diebold Goes 0 For 3 In Massachusetts Case 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Diebold should just (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ScrewMaster (602015) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @08:19PM (#18598065)
    stick to ATMs.

  • Score.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NightWulf (672561) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @08:21PM (#18598093)
    one for the good guys. It's a start. Just amazes me how in some countries the mere thought of voter fraud creates giant revolutions, while in America you have blatant evidence of fraud, and very few people care.

    • Re:Score.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Cylix (55374) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @08:25PM (#18598121) Homepage Journal
      In America, we are just hoping to get a piece of the fraud pie!

      We have dreams too... they are just different then everyone else.

    • Re:Score.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Volante3192 (953645) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @08:31PM (#18598173)
      I used to care. But I think voter apathy is contagious...

      Frankly, I think this country would be better off the sooner we start *really* fucking it up than later. Shock people into realizing their fragile little world is on the brink of becoming glass shards...

      If we just slowly slide downward, people won't notice...like now. It's like gently turning the heat up on a frog in a pot of water on the stove. Need to crank that oven dial to 11 and make froggy jump out and go "DAMN, THAT'S HOT"
      • For what it's worth, snopes.com [snopes.com] says the legend of the boiling frog is false. But I do wonder sometimes if we should just get it over with and start fucking things up ASAP. :)

      • Re:Score.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by value_added (719364) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @08:58PM (#18598393)
        I used to care. But I think voter apathy is contagious...

        Could be that the options aren't too exciting. There's never a CowboyNeal option, is there?

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by WindBourne (631190)
          Well, kidding aside, I tend to think that you are correct. All in all, the choices have been 2 lamers; a dem and a rep.. Worse, most of these are crooks.
          1. Reagan was a traitor, liar and a crook. Worse, his policies have damaged America like no other had, until W..
          2. Poppa bush (a president that I liked) may also been part of the reagan fraud. I would like to believe that he was not in the Iran Hostage deal (where the republicans cut deals with the Iranians to hold the hostage until after the election, which i
            • Obama talks a good talk. I think he would make a great first black president - one that does very little, thereby doing very little to make people nervous about having elected a black president. Chappelle made a joke about being the first black president, but in essence he's right - it's a very "hot" proposition. Elect one, let him do very little for four to eight years, then next time around, a black president with real chops won't have to jump those hurdles. I mean, really, a president that does nothing?
        • If nobody on the ballot seems acceptable, write in someone who is. That could be yourself, if you are eligible to hold that office. Or arrange with a small group of like-minded people to use the same write-in protest candidate.

          There's your CowboyNeal vote. Too bad it won't win, unlike on /.

          Mal-2

      • Re:Score.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Daniel Dvorkin (106857) * on Tuesday April 03 2007, @09:12PM (#18598501) Homepage Journal
        Frankly, I think this country would be better off the sooner we start *really* fucking it up than later. Shock people into realizing their fragile little world is on the brink of becoming glass shards...

        It's very easy to say that, sitting in your office or bedroom, comfortable with a cup of coffee and your browser pointed at Slashdot ...

        Revolutions are ugly, ugly things, and so are the circumstances that create them. Anyone who seriously wants things to get much worse, much faster, is either a psychotic, or just isn't thinking things through. (Usually the latter, of course.)
        • I don't think the revolution stage is necessary, at least not yet, but something needs to shake up the voting public so they actually start caring about the government and what they do in regards to economics and diplomacy rather than abortion or evolution. Require the branches of government to have accountability on all levels.

          I, personally, don't see a way to spark that interest given the current environment outside of a jolt. I would be happy to be proven wrong though.
          • America has come close to the brink before -- we very nearly made the monarchist mistake after the Revolution, the savage-suppression mistake after the Civil War, and either the fascist mistake or the communist mistake (or both at once; imagine the Spanish Civil War writ large ...) during the Depression -- and every time we've pulled back. I'd like to think we can do the same this time around.

        • Anyone who seriously wants things to get much worse, much faster, is either a psychotic, or just isn't thinking things through.

          As someone that has pushed the "fuck it up so things can get better" line more than once, I have to disagree. For those that studied Plato, Marx or any other revolutionary visionary knows that real change only happens when people become fed up with their current lot. This is arguably why Soviet Communism failed and why Soviet Capitalism is showing signs of collapse, things just weren't bad enough before making the change and then change without revolution. It may be possible that we have evolved past th

          • Except there's no guarantee of "getting back on track" with a revolution, at all. In fact, the odds are pretty well against it.

            We got extraordinarily lucky once -- we could very easily have turned into the first in the long, sad series of colonies that have won their independence only to sink into a morass of dictatorship and self-inflicted poverty. The fact that we didn't is due to the group of great minds that happened to gather around the idea of independence at that particular moment; it's not the usu

            • Except there's no guarantee of "getting back on track" with a revolution, at all.

              Doesn't that depend on what "on track" means? Some would say that any change would be better than what we have now. Remember that Malevolent Dictatorships do not last. So either things getter or they get worse, forcing people into another revolution to improve things. Historically, revolutions have always led to "better" conditions even if they were not immediate. Remember it took genocide by the Khmer Rouge (which I in no way condone) to bring democracy to Cambodia, which is something the US has yet b

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Telvin_3d (855514)
                If, "Malevolent Dictatorships" really do not last, it is only true from a historical perspective. From the point of view of the people living through them, I bet they drab on and on and on. After all, dictatorships have certainly proven to be a lasting think in much of South America, Africa and the Middle East. They haven't always been the same dictator for long, but the dictatorship goes on.

                Actually, I can't think of a single example in the past half century that a people got fed up with a dictator, thr

      • Re:Score.. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by lawpoop (604919) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @09:20PM (#18598549) Homepage Journal
        I think you're right. In America, our system still works well enough that people's daily lives aren't yet too much impacted by fraud and cronyism.

        There's a quote I encountered somewhere in my anthropology studies that says "People don't protest when their bellies are full." Everyone loves to say that nobody in America cares, but when the shit starts hitting the fan, you will witness a sea change in the US, on the scale of the 1930s. The kindling is building up, sooner or later some event will spark the whole thing aflame.

    • The Diebold Distraction (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ES&S is the corporation which made the machines used to steal^H^H^H^H^H carry out the Presidential election in Ohio in 2004.

      I don't know why we're congratulating ES&S on its victory over Diebold. Why is one black box maker any better than another? Let's use a sensible system instead.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Volante3192 (953645)
        We're not congratulating ES&S, as much as being happy that justice is working. The judge rejected all of Diebold's whiny claims. ES&S is irrelevant to that point.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by EvanED (569694)
          It's completely arbitrary and based on a naive world view. If Diebold is bad, their competition HAS to be good.

          To be fair, hasn't that been the US's foreign policy for, like, half a century at least?

          "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"?

          So it's not just /.ers screaming "M$! OMG TEH EV1L!11!!"
    • The Government of the Orange Revolution (was that what it was called?) is falling apart. President just dismantled Parliament, Parliament refuses to dismantle, etc.

    • Re:Score.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kandenshi (832555) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @08:46PM (#18598301)
      Indeed, it's disturbing and scary how apathetic people are over here about the political system. I for one propose that we immediately

      Oh, crap! The newest episode of "So You Think You Can Dance" is airing!

      bbl
        • Funny moderations continue to be broken and result in 0 Karma, and that's why when I have mod points, I tend to go Interesting or Insightful when I find a funny comment.
          • Maybe enough people have set custom moderation filters with Funny=-3 that slash has finally figured out that its not really a +1? Like my sibling post, I also meta moderate against people abusing the moderation system like you.
            • Then there are some of us who browse with Funny=+5.

              I enjoy comedy, it's a great thing and it is a bit annoying that no one can earn any points from it.

              However, you can meta-moderate me all day and even mod me down. The youngsters might worry about karma, but I've got a bit built up and it won't take long to replenish it.

    • It's not that they don't care. It's that if they do anything more than talk about the problem, they'll be punished severely, and even talking about it can get dangerous if the words are effective enough.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by UbuntuDupe (970646) *
      The reason, I think, is that in other countries -- those ones with all the revolutions -- political corruption is *the* way to get rich. In developed, transparent countries, your livelihood doesn't depend much on which party is in power in the first place. You can still get a job, you can still start a business, you can still buy farmland or a house, etc. While Congress still doles out a HUGE number of special favors that lobbyists fight over, that "corrupt" spending doesn't take such a large *fraction*
    • in America you have blatant evidence of fraud, and very few people care


      For some Americans the apathy comes from the perception that there isn't a lot of difference between the main choices available. So I vote this guy or that guy, what's the difference ... kind of mentality.

  • Diebold is the SCO of politics (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2007, @08:48PM (#18598311)
    Diebold is the SCO of politics

    • Backfire (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Chris Burke (6130)
      And like SCO, maybe this suit is set to backfire on them?

      They tried to get an injunction to stop the contract going through so as to damage their opponent, but they also tried to keep the feds from being able to view their internal documents in the process. Well they didn't get their injunction, and now the feds are going to have access to those documents during discovery. Do these documents contain things they really don't want anyone to know? It's happened before, but are they afraid that even more doc

  • Of course... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Arceliar (895609) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @08:59PM (#18598405)
    Why do I get the feeling that according to Diebold things went more like 4:1 in their favor?

    Oh...right... well, *ahem* let's just hope their court case continues to..uhhh... die boldly?

  • Massachusetts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by erroneus (253617) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @09:11PM (#18598493) Homepage
    "The Clue State"

    Or maybe just call it "Massa-clue-setts"

    First OpenDocument. Now this. Love it.

    • Re:Massachusetts (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2007, @09:35PM (#18598655)
      Yeah, um, Massachusetts is the state that thinks that anything with blinking lights on it is a bomb, forcing them to evacuate Boston over some signs with blinking lights and batteries on them.

      Then there's the Big Dig, where a tunnel with 2-ton tiles which were held up with bolts that were simply GLUED to the roof fell and killed someone.

      Not to mention that if you go looking for any Open Document files from the Massachusetts government, you won't find any. They were supposed to switch over to open formats completely starting in January, 2007.

    • 1) I find it highly offensive and irresponsible that the discussion on /. for this case (both this story and the one before) has automatically presumed that the disabled community is being used as a witless proxy for larger battles.

      2) Having read and digested the entire nuanced thread, particularly posts like this [teitac.org] and that [teitac.org], I have come to the reasoned conclusion that disability access is being used as a proxy for larger battles. I also duly note the similarly with the Massachusetts fight over ODF, but dis

  • Isn't it time for open source? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Toe, The (545098) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @09:32PM (#18598637)
    There are several open source voting machine projects on SourceForge. WTF is our problem for not getting our governments to use the auditable machines?

    Or what about open source governance? Isn't it time to get rid of the institutions that are based on those of our pre-human ancestors? How about a little technology in our government?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_governanc e [wikipedia.org]
    http://www.metagovernment.org/ [metagovernment.org]

    We have everything we need.

    • Re:Isn't it time for open source? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Rob the Bold (788862) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @09:45PM (#18598717)

      There are several open source voting machine projects on SourceForge. WTF is our problem for not getting our governments to use the auditable machines?

      ES&S has an x86-based iVotronic machine that does run Linux. The project was shelved in 2003. It's got a touchscreen (with working Linux driver), pushbuttons (with working driver), audio-out (working under Linux) and a printer option. I bet you could compile several of those to run on that platform.

    • Most of the people making the decisions don't understand the technology. We have to figure out how to educate them first. The same problem applies to Washington, how else do you explain the stupid laws proposed? They fall for the best song and dance with the biggest donations!
    • I am in favor of such forms of government as you listed above, but I think three things have to happen in order for them to be implemented on a large scale.
      1. These have to be shown to work on a large scale. This is where I give hippies credit -- they tried creating communes and 'intentional communities' in the sixties stretching to today. To a large part, they didn't have staying power, much less spreading power. There are still intentional communities up and running today, but more or less, they failed. B

  • Same Sh*t, Different Flies (Score:5, Informative)

    by lagartoflojo (998588) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @09:49PM (#18598737)
    Are we supposed to be cheering because Diebold got rejected? From here [wikipedia.org]:

    Thom Hartmann stated in CommonDreams.org (Nov 4 2004, [32]): "About two years ago [Jan 2003], I wrote a story for these pages, "If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines," that exposed how Senator Chuck Hagel had, before stepping down and running for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska, been the head of the voting machine company (now ES&S) that had just computerized Nebraska's vote. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska, nearly all on unauditable machines he had just sold the state."
    As we would say here, ES&S is the same shit with different flies. Until the law changes [slashdot.org], it doesn't matter if you vote on a Diebold machine or on an ES&S machine, you will still have not idea what really happened to your vote.
    • This is exciting news. I wonder how long it is before an unknown hacker gets elected President? Hey an unknown redneck got elected it's about time a hacker got the job.

  • On the brightside (Score:4, Funny)

    by edwardpickman (965122) on Tuesday April 03 2007, @10:15PM (#18598905)
    Diebold takes the mystery out of elections. It might be a more efficent use of campaign funds to stop wasting the money on political ads and just use it to bribe Diebold.

  • This (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Quzak (1047922)
    Who ever wins, we lose. Pure and simple. Wake up folks.
  • I don't know, maybe Diebold has some kind of Braille plugin or voice prompts, but how is a guy without arms and legs supposed to vote, unless he is a truly great lower. I would hope disabled people can get a special poll assistant, who ideally sends the voter back with a videotape documenting the transaction.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by UbuntuDupe (970646) *
      If a corporation gave me 35% of its profits every year, before I asked, regardless of what I ever did for it, I think people would characterize that relationship as "me asserting myself over that corporation".
    • the computerized system that orders posts shows that no sir, you are somewhere closer to 2nd or third post.

      I wonder if it was wise for /. to outsource some parts of slashcode to Diebold.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.