Now I’m not saying that ES&S will be involved in voting machine fraud, but given the sheer number of articles posted here on DU in the past about it and the many more we haven’t, one does have to wonder if this will simply consolidate the possibility. In other words, if their machines are eventually found to have, shall we say, made fraud easier to perpetrate, voting machine buyers will have fewer places to go.
Sen. Charles Schumer asked the Justice Department’s antitrust division on Monday to investigate the recent sale of Diebold’s voting machines division to a competitor, saying the deal raises anti-competitiveness concerns and has “adverse implications on how our country votes.”
The letter comes just days after another voting machine company filed an anti-trust lawsuit in federal court in Delaware against Diebold and Election Systems & Software.
Earlier this month, Diebold announced the sale of its voting machine division, Premier Election Solutions, to top competitor ES&S for about $5 million.
The sale gives ES&S, already the largest voting machine maker in the country, a near monopoly on the voting machine industry. According to the company’s website, its systems, used in 43 states, counted “approximately 50 percent of the votes in the last four major U.S. elections.”
But I thought Diebold was in Bush’s & Repucks pocket. So isn’t this a good thing?
Electronic voting machines should use open source software so as to prevent shenanigans. There should be NO trade secrets when it comes to voting.
NO ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES. PERIOD.
I’m a software engineer, I know how easily software can be hacked. We need real ballots, physical ballots, that can be counted. Of course fraud can still occur with real ballots, it’s just infinitely simpler with electronic ballots. Just a few keystrokes, and thousands of votes for candidate X go to candidate Y.
Waiting now to see how the wingnuts defend electronic ballots…
It was sold for $5 million dollars? Is that it? That implies that either the voting machine business was extremely tiny for diebold; or it’s a tiny business altogether. Which would make it even scarier that our election system is beholden to an apparently tiny industry…
sheer, please
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lazespud has it a little backwards. The tiny company was merely the tool to sway a bit of the electoral map.
$5M when the last prez cycle cost $1B. It is merely a “Saturday Night Special.”
Remember, a good criminal always disposes of the weapon after use, kids.
“He who votes decides nothing; he who counts the votes decides everything.”
it’s worse than you think. this info is from wikipedia, but being a native nebraskan, i can verify the accuracy….
“Chuck Hagel was CEO of American Information Systems Inc. (AIS), the same company that electronically counted 80% of the votes in the state in the very same election that he won his stunning upset. He did not disclose his position as CEO of the company in his mandated disclosures, until its name-change to Election Systems & Software (ES&S) in 1997.”
the issues don’t stop there.
#4 I’m a software developer myself to so I hear you… and agree for the most part, but what if the source code was open for everyone to view? I think that should totally fix it and make it much more reliable then voting on paper…
If voting machines made it harder to commit voter fraud, I’d be all for them. But the evidence so far points to it making it easier.
At least with paper ballots you needed a large number of people to defraud an election. The machines require a smaller number, maybe even only one talented hacker.
I’m sure the people here at DU are well aware how easy it is for someone to hack a system.
Sometimes old school (paper ballots) is just better
Electronic voting is intrinsically flawed. Who’s pushing this electronic crap?
Voting machines of any kind are rather ridiculous and overly complicated. For years, my state had the big old lever machines. That had to be hauled out of storage every four years, and out to all the voting places. I believe they were stored at some Defense Contractor’s warehouse, at taxpayer’s expense, of course. Nice bit of extra business for that concern, to just sit on a bunch of curtained booths, in some spare building they had. Probably over charged us. A paper ballot system would have worked just as well, and at a fraction of the transportation and storage costs. But now we too have the LCD voting tablets. And I’m wondering who gets paid to sit on those, until they’re needed? It’s got to be a very secure sight, or someone might manage to damper with them. They could be allocated to some large bank vaults, but I’ll bet not. They’re probably all sitting in another aircraft hangar, boxed up and wrapped in plastic.
Why can’t they just use the same technology that used to could the SATs papers of students? Voting is multiple choice, right? So how is the process any different that taking school tests? That any of this specialized counting of political choices, even makes a lousy damn, is the real con job. Soon as the one you voted for gets into office, an army of lobbyists are waiting to change their votes.
#10 markbaars, even if it’s open source, what about when the data is transmitted, how will the votes be stored? in a file on a computer somewhere? who gets access to it? It’s just too complicated… paper ballots are the safest way.