Diebold's voting machines

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This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on September 24, 2003). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

There’s a good article on Salon looking at the issues with Diebold’s electronic voting machines, which are being used to replace troublesome punch-card voting machines after the 2000 voting debacle. It doesn’t look like our votes are any safer under the new system.

…according to Bev Harris, a writer who has spent more than a year investigating the shadowy world of the elections equipment industry, the replacement technologies the court cited may be worse — much worse — than the zany punch-card systems it finds so abhorrent. Specifically, Harris’ research into Diebold, one of the largest providers of the new touch-screen systems, ought to give elections officials pause about mandating an all-electronic vote.

Harris has found critical flaws in Diebold’s voting software, and she’s uncovered internal Diebold memos in which employees seem to suggest that the vulnerabilities are no big deal. The memos appear to be authentic — Diebold even sent Harris a notice warning her that by posting the documents on the Web, she was infringing upon the company’s intellectual property. Diebold did not return several calls for comment.

Not only has Diebold refused to comment, they’ve gone so far as to force Bev Harris to take down her site exposing the vulnerabilities.

Due to a dispute with Diebold, Incorporated, and its wholly owned subsidiary Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (collectively “Diebold”), which is claiming links to certain materials that do not reside on the blackboxvoting.org website constitute  copyright infringement, blackboxvoting.org has been temporarily disabled.

Congressman Rush Holt has sponsored a bill that would require electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail — this measure should definitely be supported.

(via Kos, [Kos [again]], Chris)

1 thought on “Diebold's voting machines”

  1. I don’t quite understand – why isn’t voting done the way all civilized nations of the West and the East do it: you put an “X” on a piece of paper. The papers are then counted by hand. The process is very quick (about 4 hours for a nation the size of Canada, say, or the size of the countries in Europe. If you are a computer nerd the process is of the order of O(log n)). This process removes all the problems:

    1. Machine errors,
    2. Premature media vote count disclosures (they ought to be made illegal, BTW),
    3. Relative immunity to fraud by close-tying the votes to the voting “hardware” itself (the pieces of paper) thus limiting the potential for fraud to small isolated exceptional pockets since any fraud would necessarily have to involve somehow physically dealing with those pieces of paper and counting them. It’s very hard to organize it on a scale more global than a county.

    Here is how the voting could go:

    1. People vote.
    2. The media report no information (nothing, nada, except perhaps exit polls although the practice seems dubious to me as well) until all the polling locations have closed.
    3. The hand count begins. It can involve local communities and kids from local schools – it can be a great excuse for a valuable civic lesson, “vote counting parties” with weenies and apple pies, etc.
    4. 4 hours or so later the results are in and are published in the media. This would be the unofficial result with the official results coming in the next day.

    Very simple. I have absolutely no idea why we can’t do this – EVERYONE else does it this way. E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E.

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