Diebold Disease From Sea to Shining Sea
While the recent events in Utah’s Emery County have been overshadowed by the Diebold disaster in California, in the end, they may prove to be more devastating.
The dynamic behind the unraveling of Diebold seems like something akin to the adage about lying which escapes me right now - something about how once you start lying, you can’t remember which lies you told to whom.
This week’s events in Utah seem to indicate a predictably cavalier assumption on the part of Diebold and a few overly-confident Utah State gov’t order-takers that this fire would be doused with the help of the ancient Emery County establishment who sit up straight when the Lt. Guvnah’s boys make the drive down to Emery County at the “drop of a hat” to meet up with some Diebold executives arriving on private jet at an airport that never sees much other than crop dusters.
Perhaps Diebold didn’t expect “red Utah” might have an elections clerk in a small red rural county with some integrity and a backbone to match, who would not stand, salute, and resign upon request but rather stand firm in the authority of his elected role of 23 years in the face of suited — and not “Sunday-best†suited — passengers from a private jet who coordinated super serious, supra-procedural, uniquely and uncharacteristically exclusive, almost regal in officiousness (they were wearing suits and flew in on a private jet’n all) extra-legal and unprecedented private proceedings with the indigenous deer in the headlights citizen geriatric office holders followed by a taped humiliatingly farcical public hearing for the benefit of the rubes who showed up, followed by another exclusive closed-door meeting resulting in a rhetorically and presumptuously assumed-tendered however rejected and promised (to the suits) resignation followed the next day by written confirmation of the never-tendered resignation to fulfill the assurances made to the suited men from the private jet by now long departed and a series of suspiciously abrupt maneuvers still unfolding as I write this.
One thing is clear to anybody in the tech business; its painful to pitch expensive hardware for nearly undetectable defects. Diebold thought they could pass off a bunch of defective machines on Emery County cause “heck they all vote the same way anyhow.” Who would bother to contest an election in those parts let alone take issue the the reliablity of some contraption that don’t even run on diesel?
Lets see…forty yellow-dotted Diebold computers in a little Utah County, private jet, high-ranking state gov’t officials, forced resignation…as Molly Ivins would say, “are we having fun yet?”
March 31st, 2006 at 10:46 am
here is an inkling of how bad it is.
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1899
March 31st, 2006 at 2:42 pm
By the way, the guy who first said DieBold software was prone to attack and was unsafe - the one who made front page everywhere and fanned the fires of paranoia - later recanted and said he looked at software that was never going to be used. But that landed on page 45.
Diebold makes far and away the best terminal in the industry. Law of Averages says when you ship a few thousand, things tend to break. Mix that with attitudes of personal aggrandizement or political posturing and you have “controversies” often self-wrought. The commissioner of Emery County seems to be a bit over the top. Educated guess says there’s some hidden agenda here.
When you buy a product and it doesn’t work right when you get it out of the box, who do you call? The store? The Manufacture? Or do you call some Non-profit group to come in a check it out for themselves? They should have contacted Diebold or their Rep. before tampering with the machine. Basically the machines that the group inspected cost the county/state $40k a machine.
Some counties in California sued the state to keep their terminals. Good old Summit County went with a competitor because the Republican leader’s friend was the lobbyist for another manufacturer, although the Democrats insisted on the Diebold terminals (how ironic). Anyway, hundreds of the battery packs were bad and the next shipment was no better.
It’s a tough game, loaded with lots of issues. But Diebold is pretty above board with their product and support. What we are seeing is more of a local battle between the counties and the state gov’t. than real concern over machines.
I also know that Diebold takes great pride in their history and background and wouldn’t jeopardize their integrity over voting machines here in the US. Though the man in charge over there is a big supporter of Bush and the GOP, he manages to make clear that his political beliefs do not become his Business Objectives.
Emery County Diebold related links:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2785
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3649394
http://www.ecprogress.com/index.php?tier=1&pub=2006-03-28&page=news#3
April 3rd, 2006 at 7:30 am
By the way, in case you care to know, he ordered Diebold terminals (without any authorization from us or the capital) to have other activists have complete access to our systems. Ironically, they found absolutely nothing wrong or breach able. Since he caused the unauthorized access to the systems, by state and federal law, they must be recertified. There’s no reason why Diebold, or the Tax Payers should pay for that, it should come out of his own pocket.
Also, units in Ohio, Illinois, and Utah have had the paper receipts audited against the electronic count. Each audit has found the terminals to be 100% accurate. Not bad.