Diebold Vote Fixing. Real?

[kster]

((From September 23, 2006)), But, may be worth another look.



Diebold Vote Fixing. Real?
Category:
Posted on: September 23, 2006 9:37 AM, by Ed Brayton

I've not said anything on the subject of election fixing over the last few years. I've seen lots of allegations of vote fixing in Ohio and other states, but never paid much attention to them. It would take extraordinary audacity for anyone to actually fix election results in any major way and I've pretty much ignored the issue. Basically, it would take a lot of evidence to convince me that it really happened. But after reading this article by Robert Kennedy in Rolling Stone, I have to admit that it seems a lot more plausible than I previously thought. At the very least, there's a lot of smoke in that article; there could well be fire too.

The article contains specific allegations from a former Diebold employee, which I regard as a credible source. Among the allegations are that Diebold won a contract in Georgia that it should not have won because of political connections:

Hood had been present in May 2002, when officials with Cox's office signed a contract with Diebold - paying the company a record $54 million to install 19,000 electronic voting machines across the state. At a restaurant inside Atlanta's Marriott Hotel, he noticed the firm's CEO, Walden O'Dell, checking Diebold's stock price on a laptop computer every five minutes, waiting for a bounce from the announcement.
Hood wondered why Diebold, the world's third-largest seller of ATMs, had been awarded the contract. The company had barely completed its acquisition of Global Election Systems, a voting-machine firm that owned the technology Diebold was promising to sell Georgia. And its bid was the highest among nine competing vendors. Whispers within the company hinted that a fix was in.

"The Diebold executives had a news conference planned on the day of the award," Hood recalls, "and we were instructed to stay in our hotel rooms until just hours before the announcement. They didn't want the competitors to know and possibly file a protest" about the lack of a fair bidding process. It certainly didn't hurt that Diebold had political clout: Cox's predecessor as secretary of state, Lewis Massey, was now a lobbyist for the company.


That's a pretty damaging allegation, and it ought to be investigated. The nine bids for the contract should all be made public so we can see if Diebold actually was the highest. And Secretary of State Cathy Cox should be put under oath and asked all of the details on why Diebold was picked. The second allegation is that, due to time constraints, Diebold was given total control over the election process without direct state oversight:

The problem was, Diebold had only five months to install the new machines - a "very narrow window of time to do such a big deployment," Hood notes. The old systems stored in warehouses had to be replaced with new equipment; dozens of state officials and poll workers had to be trained in how to use the touch-screen machines. "It was pretty much an impossible task," Hood recalls. There was only one way, he adds, that the job could be done in time - if "the vendor had control over the entire environment." That is precisely what happened. In late July, to speed deployment of the new machines, Cox quietly signed an agreement with Diebold that effectively privatized Georgia's entire electoral system. The company was authorized to put together ballots, program machines and train poll workers across the state - all without any official supervision. "We ran the election," says Hood. "We had 356 people that Diebold brought into the state. Diebold opened and closed the polls and tabulated the votes. Diebold convinced Cox that it would be best if the company ran everything due to the time constraints, and in the interest of a trouble-free election, she let us do it."
That agreement should be made public. And again, Cox should be put under oath and questioned about this. The third allegation is that shortly before the elections, a patch was applied to the voting machines that did not do what it was supposed to do, leading to questions as to what it actually did do:





http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/diebold_vote_fixing_real.php

[crickets]

1. One ticked off GA voter here

I hadn't heard about this particular wrinkle before. Thanks for posting the link. There's no way we voted in Sonny Perdue and Saxby Chambliss in 2002. No. Way.

Every time I walk into the polling place to face those damned machines it's so frustrating. I know my vote is no longer my own. Oh, to be disenfranchised in the 21st century.

K&R :dem:

[kster]

8. Keep fighting

their bullsh*t, they think they can talk their way out of this, but they can NOT, ITS OVER. Never Give Up. NGU.

[crickets]

11. Thanks, kster.

It's tough, but I keep trying.

[Ellipsis]

2. ... still pertinent K&R

But not as old as this


http://www.kssos.org/other/news_releases/PR_2001/PR_042401.html


SECRETARY THORNBURGH TO
TESTIFY ON NEED FOR ELECTION REFORM

Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh has been invited by Congressman Robert Ney of Ohio to testify on the need for election reform following the November 7, 2000 election. Secretary Thornburgh will join Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, Arkansas Secretary of State Sharon Priest, and New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron in Washington, DC to testify before the United States House Committee on House Administration on Wednesday, April 25 at 10:00 am Eastern Standard Time at the Longworth House Office Building.


Hmmmmm. Recognize any names? ...oh the tangled web we weave.

[bleever]

6. These people could Help America Vote

(republican) Automatically!

Let's HAVA round of applause for our elected* officials.


*"Elected" being defined as elevated to office under existing legal standards operative at that time.

[kster]

7. Robert Ney, Kenneth Blackwell and Katherine Harris,

and to think that the Politicians went, and are still going along, and also are, Remaining silent about all of this? :wow:

[byronius]

3. K & R. And a shoutout to our own Debra Bowen, Diebold Dragon-Slayer.

California is safe and sound, and I feel like I helped, because I donated my last hundred bucks to her. Diebold hates Bowen with a passion -- funded McPherson's campaign, and spread dirt. Bowen's first act was to appoint the attorney who filed the Bilbray/Busby San Diego lawsuit as the Electronic Voting Czar. Diebold is doomed in California.

Note to Diebold: Get the fuck out of my state, you Evil Assholes. I trust that history will judge the name Diebold very harshly -- it means 'to cheat', as in 'that guy really pulled a Diebold on you in that poker game, huh?'

[kster]

4. I like that, I like that a lot

I will never be Diebold'ed, ES&S'ed or Sequoia'ed again, get your evil asses out of our vote counting process, you had your chance and NOW YOU ARE DONE! :)

[aquart]

5. Thank you. You spent well.

[PATRICK]

9. This is why

this whole mess has stampeded forward. People don't (want to) believe in mass fraud. But fraud doesn't have to be massive, just enough. This weird trust that no one is interested in stealing offices that transfer trillions of dollars into sundry pockets with the ,most terriifying military capability in world history is pretty small minded. In fact, small fraud can happen in Podunk for small reasons. These stories are there but for the sake of "voter confidence" it is better to be conned than to discourage voters. Werll, thanks to corruption with a joke of oversight people are pretty well cynical and made to feel extra hopeless in the bargain.

All that aside. Lookk under the hood. Can't. It's glued shut, propretary proerty that only thieves and whistleblowers have dared to pry open a bit. Secret counting of invisible ballots. Ludicrous and unnacceptable on its simple face. For the sake of ease? Technical awe to thrill cynical savages into comining in to gawk at the baubles? Ease of mess and worry since there is no messy conflict once the computer screen pops up the tallies? The whole thing stinks so simply only those looking all around, but not directly at these 100% potential cheat machines, can buy inot them. Scoundrels and idiots and the conned. Andd the weird sophistry of circular reasoning that spins the American sucker everytime is that you can't prove the machines are a fraud(ridiculous, what's the the matter with YOU?) because they are built to be accountability proof. Andf it is all the language of cons, repressing accountability measures, installing smoke and mirrors, attacking questioners, flattering suckers, bullying lawmakers, ignoring safeguard agreements, allying the technology to simpler vote suppression(damn things don't even work in Dem districts!) which in turn are used in the boldest of cons. One fault covers the exposed behind of the other. And if these WRE innocent maschines(despite absolutely inherent dangers) the whole sales con, bullying, unqestionable results, etc are linked to bribery, corruption and every other human vice seeking comfort and linkage to the gravy train.

All in the cynical comfort that the benfiticaries of fraud protect themselves and the system once inside and the law(and especially its enforcement) is suspiciously soft on the club of the elected that pass laws to "police themselves". It is essentially a victor's law that only an electoral Nuremberg Trail could treat in its entirety. The full reform package of this extreme experiment whcih narrowly doomed democracy needs full implementation.

And we credit ourselves if we shuffle sideways toward a doltish awakening, partial fixes, partial justice. And many of the cons and corrupt sneak out of town to seek new beginnings.

[Stevepol]

10. This whole thing is just common sense a 5th grader could understand.

If you have the vote counted in total secrecy without verification, THIS CANNOT BE A DEMOCRACY.

If there is no way to detect that the machines have been fraudulently programmed, it's not a question of IF it will happen. It is a foregone conclusion that it will happen. It's impossible to even imagine that it won't take place or that it didn't.

If you had the opportunity to steal an election knowing you could never be caught, would you do it?

And here you have a company, Diebold, having bought a firm, GES, to program the elections in GA and elsewhere that had 5 ex-felons in upper management positions at the time (2002), and you're telling me they DIDN'T use the opportunity to steal the elections? Get real. It's hard enough for an honest man not to take an opportunity to steal an election if he knows he can't be caught. For a criminal organization it's an absolute certainty that it happened.