Diebold to throw in the towel on electronic voting?
Briefly Noted
By blackhedd Posted in Diebold | Elections — Comments (32) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The AP reports that the venerable Diebold Corporation is considering an exit from the electronic voting machine business. It's probably a good idea for them to stick to their knitting (they are a leading supplier of ATM machines) and stop being a punching bag for the Democrats and the MSM (Diebold's CEO is a Republican, therefore all electronic elections are stolen!)
You know, I've always found it more than a little strange that the company people trust with their cash is not to be trusted with their votes. Wild guess, which do you think is more important to the vast majority of people?
Diebold to throw in the towel on electronic voting? 32 Comments (0 topical, 32 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
"You know, I've always found it more than a little strange that the company people trust with their cash is not to be trusted with their votes."
People can check their bank balances. Why bother making such a flimsy argument?
If an ATM machine steals money from you (or is hacked in such a way as to divert cash to some bad guy in Bulgaria), your bank (and their insurers) are on the hook. And the PR disaster would be far worse than the money losses. Do you think anyone would ever purchase and install these machines if they weren't exceptionally comfortable with their security?
And yet the argument from the Democrats (unquestioningly reported by the MSM) is that voting machines made by the same company are easy to hack.
And there are plenty of people who honestly believe that Diebold themselves have manipulated the machines (they're eeeevil Republicans, after all). But no company wants to get thrown out of business and their officers thrown into jail badly enough to violate election laws like that.
There goes my evil plot to steal the next election and be Mayor of Alexandria, Va.
Kyoto Now! (Because only pollution from the US hurts the planet)
The point is having traceability and the ability to double-check the results. I don't know how to explain it any more clearly. If you don't understand this then you must not want to understand.
After November 2000, I thought the point was to have ballots that couldn't be misinterpreted by people of normal intelligence so as to produce votes for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore.
Diebold saw an opportunity to address a market need that was driven by a massive amount of government-mandated spending. It didn't work out for them and they're bailing. That's no one's problem but their own (and the taxpayers that got suckered into paying for it).
We don't need better voting systems than we've had all along. Even if we had electronic machines with traceability and double-checkability, it wouldn't produce tangibly better elections than we have now. There, that's an opinion and you're free to debate it here, but I probably won't bite because it's just not that important.
And Hal, don't honk me off. You have no clue what I understand or want to understand, so stick to things you know something about.
Yes, it would be tangibly better, because there would be a tangible audit trail.
Logic is usually an alibi in matters of politics, but the logic crumbles more easily in some cases than in others.
For gods sake the votes are stored in an access database with a standard password and no changelog controls.
I don't believe for one minute there was a plot. I don't believe for one second Diebold made a competent product.
We should all be happy they are gone.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Diebold made a number of architectural and PR decisions that came back to bite them in the a**.
Basing the platform on windows was simply stupid.
Using Access was even dumber.
The cases were insecure.
The motherboards were insecure and had an unprotected USB port.
The code was improperly audited and badly designed too boot.
Code updates were applied after it was legally permitted.
They should have built all the systems to supply paper trails.
The training of the eduction officials was weak.
Not working with their critics was a dumb move.
Diebold makes very good ATMs (from what I know) but the markets for ATMs and elections machines are vastly different, and clearly Diebold really didn't understand that market. I'm glad they are getting out of the business.
I really like the system I use here in California. I mark a ballot with a felt pen. The ballot is scanned and the saved. If I miss mark a ballot, the scanner coughs it up and I have to revote. There is both an electronic record of where and when my vote was cast as well as the actually paper ballot - so the whole thing is auditable. You can't stuff the ballot box before or after the election (the electronic scanners won't take them) and if you try and edit the database, the rescan (and I think automatically rescan all ballots after the election) will catch it.
It is still possible to "hack" this system (that goes far any system). But it is several orders of magnitude more difficult than it is to hack Diebolds.
And I made much the same point about the ATM machines a while ago. But the Donks have been successful at ignoring that fact and impugning Diebold over its voting machines. As you say, the problem is really that Diebold's CEO is a Republican, and because of that, Diebold realizes that it just can't win, and that staying in the game is all downside, so they're thinking of getting out.
It's probably strictly a business decision for them, and arguably a good one given the political climate. Diebold has become the corporate whipping boy for everyone from Avi Rubin at Johns Hopkins to hard-core freakazoids at Blackboxvoting.com.
[I'd like to note to the directors that I can no longer find my blog entry about Avi Rubin/NIST 1, Diebold 0 in the archives]
I don't blame them for not wanting to take their company through another election cycle where their name is going to be used disparagingly throughout the media based on innuendo, lies and rumor. The polemicists and the "progressives" have won.
... except one entry. I think we're seeing a system problem of some sort.
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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
But then again, perhaps that'a good thing.
Kyoto Now! (Because only pollution from the US hurts the planet)
You were one of many victims. But it was just practice for your mayoral race. :)
I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.
It appears so. I'll forward it to people who are smarter than me.
Some of the blog entries are there, some of them aren't. Even though I know I'm not the greatest writer in the world, and I don't always write things that comport with majority viewpoints, I'd like to see them there, at least so that I can link to them.
You can see the page if you logout and do not log back in. Another trick I've found is just leave off the www at the beggining and you can see the page.
What will they do now?
Frankly, I made some hay with the "Republican-controlled voting machines" meme after November. Took a lot of wind out of their sails to actually win an election...
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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
I would be considering this because as the article points out their electronic voting machines unit is a relatively small element of the company. The problem is that the Donks hate Diebold so much for its election machines that Diebold runs the risk of having its larger business interests irreparably tarnished by staying in the game. They don't want to have the ATM and other business interests "infected" and turned into losers because the Democrats hate their CEO.
It's probably a good decision, but a horrible example of how craven and stupid the Democrats are.
Just think how much time that would save.
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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
The fact of the matter is there have been significant problems with Diebold's voting machines reported by honest sources. There have not been significant problems reported with their ATM machines. Yes, the same company makes both products. Does that automatically mean they are equally efficient or accurate? Are all vehicle models from auto manufacturers equally trustworthy? All pass crash ratings with the same score? Diebold does make ATM machines, they do function properly. That doesn't mean reported problems with their voting machines can't exist or shouldn't be looked into.
... the ATM people and the voting machine people probably don't even work together, anyway.
And yes, there are legit concerns below the hysteria over these things.
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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
"You know, I've always found it more than a little strange that the company people trust with their cash is not to be trusted with their votes. Wild guess, which do you think is more important to the vast majority of people?"
um, doesn't Diabold uses differnt (inferior) standards for its voting machines than it does for its ATM machines?
When I realized it's a threadjack. The real story here is that Diebold doesn't need this business badly enough to go through PR hell for it.
Ironic because the Democrats were all over electronic voting after Florida 2000, now they're... not.
My personal opinion is that voting isn't bad the way we do it now. There wasn't any particular need to fix a non-problem, except for the furor in Florida. That's why I made the wisecrack you responded to. Achieving extreme accuracy in cash handling is much more important than in voting.
It's hard to escape the conclusion that Democrats will never accept any election result that doesn't favor them, regardless of the voting technology. Remember how we were all ready for legal attacks all over the country last November? Since the Democrats got the result they wanted, there was no need to challenge anything.
But thats an independent variable from Diebold's competence at building vote counting systems.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Off an on, I see your comments zip by. To date, from an entirely informal survey, what I've seen is (1) a lot of backhanded shots at people you don't need to hit to make your point, (2) a determination to threadjack to make some other point you'd like, and (3) a stubborn insistence on doing both of these things after being warned.
That's not Playing Nice™. Here, with the New and Improved RedState Experience™, we value Playing Nice™, both by our site administration, and by our participants. Accordingly, I'm going to give you a chance to Play Nice™ long enough to establish some credibility on this board, before you start wandering into bad behavior again.
I'd really suggest you take me up on my offer. And learn to click "Reply to This."
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
(1) can you please give example of those 'backhanded shots'?
(2)How is it a threadjack when Diabold, and the reliability of their voting machine, is something that is precisely being discussed here?
(3) I don't remember ever been warned against anything here before , but I'll take your comment as such ;-)
(1) Go here. Then wander about the thread.
(2) It isn't being discussed here, except insofar as you raise it. The subject of the story is Diebold's business decision.
(3) See (1).
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
RememberGoldwater might have been changing the subject slightly in the earlier slavery thread, but not in this thread.
"Reply To This" doesn't work properly for me. I always have to click the link a second time before I get a form specific to the comment I am responding to.
You've made clear what your belief about the thread is elsewhere.
Point two.
Now that is a technical problem. Thanks for the heads-up.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
We'll never win back the House without them!!!
*snicker*