California AG Says He'll Sue Diebold 394
moby11 points to this Reuters story carried by Yahooo!; it begins "California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said on Tuesday he would sue electronic voting machine maker Diebold Inc. on charges it defrauded the state with false claims about its products."
And then what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Have they considered vendor lock-in?
From TFA... (Score:5, Interesting)
From the sounds of it, the person(s) involved with authorizing the installation gave in to Diebold's hype without bothering to give system a thourough inspection/review prior to making the decision. In addition to suing Diebold, maybe the AG should be looking for some heads to chop for making a bad situation[company pushing false claims] even worse[installation and failure of product]?
Re:And then what? (Score:5, Interesting)
This would be similiar to when governments began sueing Ford Motor company because their Crown Victoria police cars would explode after being hit in the rear by vehicles traveling at highway speeds. When the state filed charges, Ford stopped selling them cars.
So, this begs the question,...is California still buying diebold machines? Because if they are, then this lawsuit is nothing about ensuring voting integrity.
Re:Is this the right way to go about it? (Score:5, Interesting)
You're assuming that there is a company with a good voting machine package available and the ability to ramp up production quickly. From what I've read, the only reason most states are even looking at these machines are because they're being forced to do so by a stupid, reactionary federal law inspired by the 2000 FL problems. Here in Washington state, our government has been aggressively attacking the voting machine manufacturers because none of them make a good product but we have to buy at least one electronic voting machine per county by either 2006 or 2008 (I forget) or break federal law.
This is a clear case of reactionary legislation mandating solutions worse than the problems.
Re:And then what? (Score:1, Interesting)
Is there a shortage of other car vendors willing to sell to police forces?
Cars aren't built to take massive damage from behind because it almost never happens (aside from police cars parked on the side of the highway). Besides, there is a trunk between the passengers and rear bumper to provide a crumple zone. This isn't a flaw, it's a design choice.
Being hit from behind is one of the safest possible collisions.
[OT] Florida...? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how things are going to go in Florida this time around, between Diebold machines, institutionalized electoral mismanagement ('00 was neither their first "00", nor their last), and 2-3 hurricanes wiping the state's infrastructure flat during the run-up to the election.
Re:Price on Democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously though, I'm not one of the hysterical anti-Diebold mob, but there are a number of troubling things about this company and these systems. That said there will always be issues with any system and people crying that the sky is falling, but in this case there's enough substance and evasion by Diebold to cause some serious concerns. The case for code auditing and an open software model seems to have a great deal of appeal. I can't help but think we're rushing into this in a compressed timeframe and installing expensive systems early that will leave a technological legacy for future elections and systems to deal with. You'd have hoped that someone with a clue would have sat down and started some reasonable standards process and a software engineering effort to go along with it. OK this has happened to a limited degree but it has been steamrollered by a drive to do this in haste with intense lobbying in some areas, now what was this lawsuit about again?.
Problems? Whoooo Booooey! & LINKS! (Score:3, Interesting)
Politicians [infowars.com]
Halfway down, see ctrl-f rigging [infowars.com]
convicted fellons working for them! [infowars.com]
i don't have an account
Backdoor vote rigging? [alternet.org]
That is a starter list, I'll post more later, just mod the parent up(this one!)
What He Really Oughta Said (Score:4, Interesting)
You misunderstand...
"Lockyer determined sufficient evidence existed to go forward with a false claims lawsuit against Diebold," the statement said. The state's top lawyer earlier had dropped a criminal investigation of Diebold.
It's an electon year, right? Even if he's not up for re-election, it's the natural behavior of a politician.
To whit:
Diebold Vice President Thomas Swidarski said in a statement that the company was pleased Lockyer dropped the probe. Despite Lockyer's decision to sue, the company is "confident that the state's decision to intervene will aid in a fair and dispassionate examination of the issues raised in the case," Swidarski said.
What Swidarski really oughta said, "[the company] is confident that this is a political ploy and will amount to nothing."
Re:From TFA... (Score:2, Interesting)
Can I be the first to point out the political party affiliation of the governor of California -- namely, a Republican? That same Republican's state govn't pays the salary of the AG.
And the AG is suing Diebold, who are Republican shills.
That should say a lot about:
1) the integrity of that Republican (Schwarzenegger), and
2) the sheer incompetence and shilling performed by Diebold
How can we tell people about electronic voting? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is quite possibly the most important US domestic issue this year, and feel that the word needs to get out about this, so we can try to fix what we can before it's too late [blackboxvoting.org]. Unfortunately, I haven't been successful thus far. Has anybody else had better luck?
Re:A YRO topic?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How about simply... (Score:3, Interesting)
If they want to "hide" behind the EULA then so be it. The customer should read it. If you don't agree to the EULA, then don't buy the product, simple as that.
This whole thing is just a bunch of socialists using the liberal biased court system to attack a tax-paying company. A company that actually does something for this country instead of living off the hard work of others. If their machines don't work the way you want them to, then make your own and sell them. Compete in the real world, the marketplace, not the leftist courts.
It's right there in the article, Swidarski says it, "the state's decision to intervene". The state shouldn't intervene with the marketplace, only a freemarket will bring true equality to all people. Look at what happened to the Soviet Union with their interventionist measures.
Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:From TFA... (Score:4, Interesting)
According to the website, http://caag.state.ca.us/ag/index.htm
Under the state Constitution, the Attorney General is elected to a four-year term in the same statewide election as the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Controller, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction and Insurance Commissioner. In 1990, voters imposed a two-term limit on these statewide offices.
Meaning you can't draw a conclusion about the Governator's integrity, since he very likely wasn't involved in this decision at all.
It's all about accounting (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely right. If there is one thing ordinary citizens fail to understand about how government works, it is that in government accounting, recipients of funds do not get to "roll it over" the following fiscal period. Not only do you have to spend what you have, if you don't spend what you have, you don't get more money later.
With large government IT projects (as voting machines are), the projects that get funded get funded again only if they use the money they've been given in the first place. Complaining that government agencies *don't get it* is beside the point. They are in many ways completely hamstrung by the accounting system used by government.
In fact, dasmegabyte raises an interesting point. If you want to change things for the better, get on Congress to come up with a better means of accounting for all of those tax dollars and managing their use. There is so much waste inherent in the system that has nothing to do with Democrats and Republicans, but with bean counters and spreadsheets.
Re:Just hope he doesn't have the case in Florida.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Except it's California. If Kerry doesn't take the state easily, that's a red flag to investigate.
Re:How about simply... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is why there are libel laws. And slander. And disparagement.
This is why there are perjury laws.
This is why there are laws against speech that is intended and does result in violence.
This is why there are laws against fraud, and deceit.
This is why there are invasion of privacy laws.
And this is why there are laws against false advertising.
(To clarify, so no one tries to jump on me, almost all of these are civil rather than criminal wrongs, but the fact that they were established mostly through common law rather than legislative statutes does not diminish the fact that they are laws.)
Re:And then what? (Score:2, Interesting)
So now the argument has changed to a warrant of merchantability type thing: in selling Crown Vic's as police card, Ford warranted that they were suitable for use as police cars. Since police cars are especially likely to be involved in high speed rear end collisions, the police cars should be able to withstand them better than other cars. Since they don't (ref previous statistics), they are incorrectly designed for police use, and so Ford is liable.
As for the tin-foil-hattism about Ford refusing to sell police cruisers to states that sue them, well DUHHH! Ford is not compelled to sell their products to anybody (except race/creed/gender, etc.) and to continue to sell products to an entity that is suing you is stupid. It's like letting the slip-and-fall plaintiff back into your grocery store - it's just giving them another chance to sue.
Re:Upset? (Score:2, Interesting)
committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.
I suppose the California officials are upset that Diebold didn't include their state in the obvious corruptions of an opaque and unmonitorable voting system.
Grr I already moderated the AC which replied to you up (who btw offered this informative link [usatoday.com] which will now be negated by this post and I was going to mod you down too btw:). Just to set the record straight he didn't claim that Diebold would help deliver the votes, he said "I am committed", an "I" you conveniently truncated from your quote. It may be your belief that that is what he actually meant, personally I've always felt that it was just an unfortunate choice of words and he was talking about campaigning (I mean how stupid do you think this guy is to admit election rigging publicly).
Now don't get me wrong, I think it's more likely than not that he has some sort of plan for rigging the election in mind, I know the "don't attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity" axiom but the magnitude of the stupidity required to reach the current lack of security (they can't be that stupid can they?) combined with the fact that other than keeping the exploits more secret and non-obvious I can't think of much that I would do different if I was rigging the election (although I'd rig for the other side;).
Still that's all secondary since one thing I cannot stand on any side of a debate, and will mod down every time if I don't respond to it, is factually incorrect information, especially if such information is close enough to the truth to avoid a closer inspection and if I feel that inaccuracy may be deliberate. Yes he gave a highly controvertial claim, yes he may infact be planning to use his company to rig the election in Ohio, but the subject in that quote you gave is not his company, it's him. All it takes is one bit of damning misinformation like that to be launched on by the other side in a debate and instantly you've lost your credibility, it might be fun and satisfying to ignore the middleman by combining fact with your conclusion but flase statements like that work only to the benefit of Diebold.
Re:UK Elections (Score:2, Interesting)
I've always thought that since voting is a civic duty much like jury duty that it should be manditory to cast a vote. I figure the best way to do this would be to require a ballot receipt to be submitted along with your federal income tax filing in order to recieve a return. It would likely result in a huge number of abstentions being cast, but when presented with a choice after already reporting to a polling place I believe that the large majority of eligible voters would prefer to pick SOMEONE rether than NO ONE...
The alternate and slightly more cynical idea I had would be to require a ballot receipt in order to collect Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, and/or WIC stamps. This would dramatically increase the turn out in the quickly growing economic lower class and resultantly increase turnout in the middle and upper classes as the realized that they would become increasingly under-represented in government.
AFAIK no major political figure has ever suggested any sort of election reform even remotely similar to this. The reason is probably simple, if you are already in office there is no incentive to promote any change in the electorate...
Re:4 more years of Dubya guaranteed? (Score:5, Interesting)
OK.
Everybody is looking at how Diebold "Corporate" in Canton OH (the parent company) is riddled with Bush/GOP links. And that's true.
But it's NOT true of Global Election Systems, the Canadian company that Diebold bought in 2002 and renamed "Diebold Election Systems" (still based in Vancouver BC to this day). Diebold corp of Ohio had been investing slightly before buying them outright but the investments do NOT go all the way back to Oct. of 2000.
Late Oct. 2000, GEMS version 1.17.5 was released. Per Bev Harris, this was the earliest version she could find that had the "double set of books" hack in it apparantly designed for election fraud. See also:
http://www.equalccw.com/deandemo.html
Early Oct. of 2000, Global hired a new head programmer for GEMS: Jeffrey Dean.
During the mid to late '80s, Dean embezzled more than $400,000 from a Seattle law firm he was doing computer consulting for. Dean was convicted in the early '90s of 23 counts of computer-aided accounting fraud in what the court called a "sophisticated scheme".
How did he end up hooked up with Global?
He shared a jail cell with another of the founders during the '90s.
Upshot: Global appears to have been run by a genuine bunch of crooks. *Not* political crooks, just plain ol' crooks. Diebold corporate didn't do enough background checks at the time of the buyout and I doubt they understood what sort of pirates they'd swallowed.
I can't be sure of course, 'cuz maybe the Canton boys DID know what they were getting involved in. But if they didn't, then the whole "Bush/GOP connection thing" that the Diebold Corporate people in Ohio are now famous for was a deeply unfortunate coincidence and God only *knows* what's going to happen in November!
Keeerist.
Think this is unlikely?
The big MONEY in election fraud involves rigging *local* elections, esp. building projects, construction bonds and the like. And people don't pay near the attention to that like they do national races.
I suspect that's what Global was really after. And I suspect keeping a secret all the way up to the Bush White House would be...unmanagable and dangerous as hell.
Am I certain Bush is "clean" (of this, at any rate)? Hell no. I *do* know that a heck of a lot of Democrats in various places have pushed for Diebold (starting with Georgia) and I know that county election officials can use the "cheats" Diebold built in very damned easily. Guys, I've personally seen MS-Access loaded onto GEMS boxes within counties - Fresno County's elections staff let me peek at their systems some months back (but the MS-Access was an older version (97) not compatible with the more recent GEMS databases so any ill with it happened some time ago, not recent).
Anyways. I don't want to end up betting on whether or not Diebold will "win out" in "hacking contests" with county elections officials
Jim March
Re:The BIGGER issue... (Score:2, Interesting)
This year, the California legislature came up with a simple "recommendation only" bill to the Calif SecState urging him to look at Open Source as a concept. It was fought bitterly by, basically, Microsoft (via industry flunkies).
M$ doesn't want Open Source seen as a higher-security alternative in a mission-critical app that *everybody* is involved in...even if it's the better alternative.
Jim March
Re:I'm confused (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good Plan (Score:1, Interesting)
Likewise, when you buy a car, do you test the air bags? No, you take the company's word on it. If it turns out that the air bags don't work, sue them for as much as you can (not how much you paid because otherwise the company would have no incentive to reform).
Re:UK Elections (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Just hope he doesn't have the case in Florida.. (Score:3, Interesting)
That being said, CA as a state in Federal elections leans quite heavily towards Democratic candidates.