Reuters, December 19, 2009: "The U.S. Department of Justice and 14 states have opened investigations into the sale of Diebold Inc's (DBD.N) voting machines business to Election Systems & Software that could lead to the unwinding of the September sale, the New York Post said on Saturday. . . ."
Showing posts with label Diebold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diebold. Show all posts
December 19, 2009
September 25, 2009
September 15, 2009
September 10, 2009
NY Times: "The Business of Voting Machines"
Editorial - "The Business of Voting Machines" - NYTimes.com, September 10, 2009:
Diebold announced last week that it has sold its United States voting machine division to its main rival, Election Systems & Software.
Given Diebold’s troubling record, it is hard to lament its departure from American elections, but this sale could make a bad situation worse. Regulators should take a hard look at the anticompetitive implications. And Congress, the states and cities need to push a lot harder for fundamental reforms in the voting machine business and the way Americans vote.
Diebold has long been the company that critics of electronic voting love to hate. The company has been accused of illegally installing uncertified software and of making machines that, at least sometimes, drop votes. The company raised serious doubts about its objectivity when Diebold’s then-chief executive wrote a fund-raising letter expressing his dedication to delivering Ohio for President George W. Bush in 2004. Ohio, of course, was one of the states using Diebold voting machines.
The combination of the Election Systems & Software and Diebold American voting machine divisions raises classic antitrust concerns. Election Systems & Software, which has also been criticized for making unreliable machines, would be the nation’s largest voting machine maker by far. And states and cities, which have long complained about the low quality and high cost of the machines, would have less choice or bargaining power. . . .
More fundamentally, Congress, the states and cities should look for ways to have governments own and manage their voting machines, as the reform group FairVote has advocated. It makes no sense to allow private companies to count votes using secret, proprietary software. The federal government and the states should also require that all electronic voting machines produce a paper record of every vote and mandate random hand counts to ensure the reliability of the results.
Even if this business deal deserves to be blocked, it will take a lot more than that to fix the broken voting machine industry.
September 5, 2009
July 8, 2009
May 9, 2009
Electronic voting machine flaw
"Flaw found in electronic voting machines," themorningcall.com, Darryl R. Isherwood, May 3, 2009:
When 197 absentee votes disappeared from an electronic voting machine in California, officials were baffled. When the machine's log showed no trace of the votes -- neither cast nor erased -- they were shocked, even angry.
The company that sells the machines said the vote-counting software in the California machines was flawed and would be fixed in a newer version. Outside California, no problems involving actual reports have been reported.
But Premier Election Solutions' search for California's problem uncovered a potentially more troubling flaw in every version of the company's software, which also is used in machines in Lehigh and eight other Pennsylvania counties. The affected machines scan paper ballots -- generally absentee votes -- and upload them to a central server.
The problem: Deleted votes do not register on the audit log in all instances and could potentially go unnoticed -- and thus uncounted -- by county election officials.
Lehigh County Clerk of Elections Stacy Sterner, who oversaw a test run of the optical scan machines in November, said she is comfortable that safeguards are in place to ensure no votes are lost. Election employees count the number of absentee votes and would be aware if a large number did not register in the final tally.
But Sterner acknowledged that a small number of missing votes might be missed by employees and, without the log showing the deletion, might not be recovered.
"If we were missing a large chunk, we would know that right away,'' Sterner said. ''But if we were missing only a small amount, that might go unnoticed.''
Formerly sold by Diebold, now known as Premier , the optical -scan machines as they as they are known, scan paper ballots -- usually absentees -- and upload vote totals to a central computer. Whether the issue uncovered in California affects Premier's touch-screen machines, used in at least 16 counties in the state, including Lehigh and Carbon, remains unclear. [continued>>]
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