Diebold Threatens to Pull Out of North Carolina

foobaric writes "A North Carolina judge ruled that Diebold may not be protected from criminal prosecution if it fails to disclose the code behind its voting machines as required by law. In response, Diebold has threatened to pull out of North Carolina." From the article: "The dispute centers on the state's requirement that suppliers place in escrow 'all software that is relevant to functionality, setup, configuration, and operation of the voting system,' as well as a list of programmers responsible for creating the software. That's not possible for Diebold's machines, which use Microsoft Windows, Hanna said. The company does not have the right to provide Microsoft's code, he said, adding it would be impossible to provide the names of every programmer who worked on Windows."

Let's have a vote!

[martinultima]

Should Diebold pull out of North Carolina? Quick, to the voting booth!

Diebold threatens to pull out of North Carolina

[ErikTheRed]

I sense a great disturbance in the electorate... as if millions of voices cried out in... No wait, I'm confusing that with millions of voices not giving a rat's ass. See ya, Diebold.

Pull Out?

[kevin_conaway]

Any chance the Catholic Church was behind this?

I'll be here all week.

did you catch the judge's name?

[OldAndSlow]

Narley Cashwell

God, Southerners have the coolest names.

I Threatened To Pull Out Of Carolina Once

[Anonymous Coward]

Man was she ever pissed off. She threatened to cut it off so I didn't pull out of Carolina and we've both been happy ever since.

Nice tits too.

Such a shame...

[kcbrown]

A North Carolina judge ruled that Diebold may not be protected from criminal prosecution if it fails to disclose the code behind its voting machines as required by law. In response, Diebold has threatened to pull out of North Carolina.

Gee, that would be such a shame if that were to happen. I mean, North Carolina needs voting machines that are compromised by design, made by a company that has a vested interest in who wins the election, right?

Oh, whatever is North Carolina to do without voting machines made by an upstanding company like Diebold? Why, their voters might have to use the old paper ballot system instead! The horror!

Please stay, Diebold! Only a good rigged election can give us confidence in democracy!

Threatens to Pull Out of North Carolina

[Anita Coney]

I usually "pull out" after fucking someone too.

In addition...

[Nom du Keyboard]

impossible to provide the names of every programmer who worked on Windows.

The may not want to be identified.

Re:Proprietary shitware

[Anonymous Coward]

Code gets checked into some repository server, dunno, something that keeps track of source versions. Let's call it CVS for short here. Only a select trusted few have permission to add code into this repository. When they add something into CVS, they have to login, so their name gets automatically attached the relevant snippet. If they didn't actually write that particular piece of code, but were actually just checking it in for another programmer w/out write access, they can 1) not check it in, 2) check it in and claim ownership for themselves, 3) check it in, but add a note saying code was written by cat6509 (/. ID:887285). Then for the final released source, all you need is a crawler to go through the code, compare it to the CVS checkins log and spit out who wrote (or checked in) what.

Re:*Who* threatens?

[mordors9]

"Something must be very wrong if the supplier is threatening the customer." Gee, that never happens does it? The RIAA/MPAA do it all the time, don't they?

Headline should read

[HangingChad]

North Carolina threatens honest elections!

Re:Threatens to Pull Out of North Carolina

[fonetik]

Parent...

Which is, ironically, what people that use the pull-out method are called.

portion of leaked code

[tomcres]

...
if ( vote.party == DEMOCRAT ) {
vote.register(race, REPUBLICAN);
confirmation.print(race, DEMOCRAT);
} else {
vote.register(race, vote.party);
confirmation.print(race, vote.party);
}
...

Re:That is democracy

[Doc Ruby]

Hail to the thief!

Re:I knew it!

[slagheap]

That's what we use in the UK for all national, reginal and local elections.

Reginal? Is that where you vote for kings and queens?

Re:Some Diebold programmers were criminals

[FFFish]

Gosh, I can't see what could go wrong there.

I'm sure glad my government hasn't entrusted its vote-counting to criminals.

I hate Diebold

[sacrilicious]

(lifted from The Simpsons episode "Cape Fear".)

Lawyer: Isn't it true that you hate Diebold?

Me (dismissively amused): Diebold? That cute upstart little company that stole the election and sent this country into an economic and moral state not unlike a dark, urine-soaked hellhole?

Cheney: We object to the term "urine-soaked hellhole" when you could have used the term "torture-free patriotic heckhole".

Me: Cheerfully withdrawn.

Lawyer: But what about that tattoo on your chest? Doesn't it say, "Diebold die"?

Me: NO! That's German for "The bold, the".