Thanks to fellow SIMS student Joseph Hall for the pointer to this piece of news:
Attorneys for Diebold Election Systems Inc. warned in late November that its use of uncertified vote-counting software in Alameda County violated California election law and broke its $12.7 million contract with Alameda County.Soon after, a review of internal legal memos obtained by the Oakland Tribune shows Diebold's attorneys at the Los Angeles office of Jones Day realized the McKinney, Texas-based firm also faced a threat of criminal charges and exile from California elections.
Yet despite warnings from the state's chief elections officer, Diebold continued fielding poorly tested, faulty software and hardware in at least two of California's largest urban counties during the Super Tuesday primary, when e-voting temporarily broke down and voters were turned away at the polls.
To see the mess that was caused by this, I refer you back to Uncle Diebold's Clubhouse, a report on the March election by NFZ correspondent jrenken.
It should be interesting to see how this plays out. If Kevin Shelley, the California Secretary of State, bans Diebold machines from the november election, two of the bigger and more urban counties in the state -- Alameda and San Diego -- might be in a world of hurt. But on the other hand, I don't understand why we need electronic voting in the first place...
Posted by katster at April 20, 2004 01:33 PM
Hi Kat... the most frequent justification for electronic voting machines is accessibility (other languages, the blind, the deaf) and the cost and insecurity of paper.
Posted by: joe at April 20, 2004 02:19 PMpaper is vastly more secure than electronic data, because it actually exists.
Posted by: at April 20, 2004 05:25 PMIncidentally, India has gone to all-electronic voting.
Posted by: Warrior Tang at April 21, 2004 07:39 PMWe need electronic voting machines to give those who are too fucking stupid to operate a machine or scantron orwrite-in-ballot or whatever access to their right to vote.
Posted by: at April 24, 2004 07:33 PMWe also need voting machines not designed to be rigged. I do my elections by marking a circle on a piece of paper with an actual pen; people who can't figure that out probably aren't going to be voting in the first place. I don't understand why it's such a difficult concept.
As it stands, Diebold's stuff is fundamentally untrustworthy. Elections that don't leave behind visible records hardly count as such.
Posted by: Zibblsnrt at April 25, 2004 04:05 PM