Legal Troubles Continue To Mount For Diebold 115
dstates writes "The State of Maryland has filed a $8.5M claim against Premier Election Systems (previously known as Diebold), joining Ohio in seeking damages from the company. The claim alleges that election officials were forced to spend millions of dollars to address multiple security flaws in the machines. Previously, Diebold paid millions to settle a California lawsuit over security issues in their machines. The dispute comes as Maryland and Virginia prepare to scrap the touch screen electronic voting systems they bought after the 2000 presidential election. California, Florida, New Mexico, and Iowa have already switched to optical scanners, and voters in Pennsylvania are suing to prevent the use of paperless electronic voting systems in their state. Meanwhile, Artifex Software is suing Diebold for violations of the GPL covering the Ghostscript software technology used in the proprietary voting machines."
Weird... (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I told them so... (Score:3, Interesting)
Write "Told you so." on a letter. Include a copy of your previous correspondence. Send it in. Might make you feel good for a minute or two.
The rich got what they want! (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, the crap that kept the Bush administration in office has paid off.
Does anyone believe that the 2000 election was a legitimate Bush win? Does anyone believe that Diebold DIDN'T tamper with the machines? Now that bush is leaving office, we find that the machines are insecure and aren't going to be used?
Now, *all* of the wealthy Bush supporters made HUGE amounts of money under Bush. The bailout was basically a theft of $700B (and more to come) from the U.S. treasury for the very people that have been getting rich 8 years. Never in the history of man-kind has so much relative wealth been given to so few. How did this happen?
I can't think of a single policy of this administration that was designed NOT to remove money from the middle class and transfer it into the hands of the more wealthy. Immigration, trade, health care, intellectual property, and even the department of the interior and the CPB have all been centered around either allowing corporations to make money at the expense of the people, or out-right giving money to large corporations directly.
Now, we, the regular people, call us middle class, working poor, unemployed engineers, have to somehow rebuild the economy after its departure.
I'm 45 years old. I am ill at what I've seen happen to my country. It is a rush to the bottom. If we are not a third world nation already, we will be. Its disgusting.
Re:!Paperless (Score:3, Interesting)
The truth is, you can't have secret ballots and still have an election that isn't subverted.
Here's my take on how to do a proper paperless democracy:
Everyone gets a personal digital recorder that acts as a "testament", and when they cast their votes, the device preserves a copy as evidence.
Votes are public information, not secret.
We establish two networks for the casting of votes. One secure wired network that carries votes to a centralized point for counting, and one citizens mesh network that logs votes to a multitude of geographically distributed sites.
We should design wireless devices that can capture voting data from the mesh network and store it on a write-once medium. They should meet the goal of providing forensic evidence that would make wide scale vote tampering impossible, and they should be placed far and wide by citizens acting entirely independently of any centralized plan.
You organize things this way, everyone can confirm that their votes are being tabulated correctly, and everyone can remain in control of their own political voice. Instead of distrusting the government, we could eradicate the line that separates the government from the people and govern ourselves.
I think it's practical enough to be possible.
Stephen Heller (Score:4, Interesting)
I feel sorry for Stephen Heller, the whistleblower who was charged with three felonies for revealing Diebold's legal problems, in Feb 2004.
Re:Stephen Heller (Score:5, Interesting)
Mr. Heller pled guilty to a felony, per his legal fund website. If ever a case SCREAMED OUT for a pardon. This is it!! Mr. Heller committed a crime and was properly convicted for it, but the mitigating circumstance are outstanding. Cases like this are why State and Federal Constitutions provide the pardoning power. I sure hope for the best for this guy.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Oops. You truly are clueless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3_xFb1sWKU [youtube.com]
Did I mention Mike Connell, Rove's computer guru, subpoenaed in election, is now dead?
No we do not need those dog crap machines by the crappy company Diebold (who changed their name in an effort to obfuscate) rolled out to the rest of the nation.
What we DO NEED is to OUTLAW all electronics in our elections. PERIOD!!!