We’ve had a lot of stories on this issue like this one and this one and this one. Looks like Diebold’s boss won’t be able to “deliver” any more votes to his friends.
Feds to Toughen E-Voting Standards?
A federal agency is set to recommend significant changes to specifications for electronic-voting machines next week, internetnews.com has learned.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is recommending that the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines.
DREs are currently used by more than 30 percent of jurisdictions across the U.S. and are the exclusive voting technology in Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland and South Carolina.
According to an NIST paper to be discussed at a meeting of election regulators at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., on Dec. 4 and 5, DRE vote totals cannot be audited because the machines are not software independent.
In other words, there is no means of verifying vote tallies other than by relying on the software that tabulated the results to begin with.
The machines currently in use are “more vulnerable to undetected programming errors or malicious code,” according to the paper.
The NIST paper also noted that, “potentially, a single programmer could ‘rig’ a major election.”
It recommends “requiring SI [software independent] voting systems in VVSG 2007.”
#33: You win. No one apparently has proven they were trying to influence elections. There is only the appearance of wanting to since their products seem to have been designed to make doing so easy as research and testing has shown.
If they were deliberately designed to allow fraud, there are two possible reasons why that didn’t appear. First, far too many people voted against the desired choice and overwhelmed the fraud. Second, and more likely, all the attention on the issue made it too dangerous to attempt to do what everyone is looking for.
But without proof of wrongdoing, assuming there was no intent, there is no other alternative (and you haven’t presented any) than they are simply incompetent.
You know, what’s really disturbing is that among other things, Diebold also manufactures ATM machines that we all entrust our financial access to on a regular basis.
I think that’s where Diebold went wrong. They are probably quite good at making ATM machines, but the operations of voting machines is different. The biggest difference is that if something goes wrong, the bank has a paper trail to oversee everything. This is not possible with the voting machines, because we have a secret ballot. Also, the ATM machines don’t have to be programmed at each bank with a different menu for each location, so they don’t have to allow for easy access.
#37, Also the banks control the code. That is something Diebold refuses to allow the election officials even to see.
Who controls if there is no cheating on electronic voting. Isn’t it a little to easy for people who are in higher position to control the voting on there advantage?