No Surprise Here: Lost Votes In Last Election Due To Faulty Diebold Equipment

from the anyone-surprised? dept

Back in December, we pointed to yet another (in a long line) of stories about lost votes on an e-voting machine in an election in California. The machines in question were from Premier Election Solutions, the shiny coat of paint put on the e-voting unit of Diebold, whose name had been tarnished for a long history of defective, highly vulnerable e-voting machines (along with a long history of denying any problems whatsoever with those machines). You would think after all these years of criticism, and a shiny new name, the company would be a bit more careful to make sure its machines weren't actually defective. No such luck.

As Slashdot points out, the Secretary of State's report on the matter clearly places the blame on Diebold's faulty equipment (warning: pdf file). Still, the scariest part is what we noted in the original story about the problems: despite all of the claims to the contrary, the 200 or so lost votes wouldn't have been noticed at all under Diebold/Premier's normal auditing process. It was only because of an experimental "transparency" project set up by local officials that the mistake was noted. Thus, Diebold machines in other regions may have lost votes, and no one will know about it. So can anyone explain why anyone still uses e-voting machines from this company? For years they've lied, stonewalled, denied problems, attacked critics... and produced faulty equipment over and over again. And it's still being used.

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Maryland Suing Diebold/Premier For Money It Spent To Fix Its Voting Machines

from the pay-up dept

Things just keep getting worse for Diebold's e-voting subsidiary, that was laughably renamed Premier Election Solutions to avoid all of the baggage associated with the Diebold name. It seems that the state of Maryland is suing the company and demanding $8.5 million to cover the money the state had to pay to fix its faulty e-voting machines. You may recall that Maryland has been at the forefront in fighting Diebold/Premier over its machines. Back in 2006, following some rather damning info and significant problems, Maryland's governor wanted to get rid of all of Diebold's machines.

Diebold did its usual thing, responding to different problems, insisting there was no real problem and if there were, that it would all be fixed in time for the election in November of that year. Of course, Diebold didn't actually do much to help -- so the state of Maryland took matters into their own hands to try to fix the flaws in the machines, and now wants Diebold/Premier to pay for the costs of having done so. In rather typical fashion, Diebold/Premier has put out its usual response to pretty much any criticism: claiming it has no clue what anyone is talking about, saying that it is "puzzled by the timing and vagueness" of the lawsuit, while also saying it is: "inaccurate and unfounded." The company also says its about events that occurred "five or more years ago" (apparently, they weren't paying attention in 2006) and that "Maryland just completed one of the smoothest elections in the state's history," though the company fails to note that's more in spite of Diebold/Premier than because of it.

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Oh Look: Even More Lost Votes By Diebold/Premier

from the counting-votes-is-soooo-hard dept

Following last week's revelation of votes lost in California thanks to Premier (better known as Diebold) and its voting equipment, The Register points us to even more votes lost by Premier/Diebold machines in Ohio. Again, it was only because of a special, rare, spot check, which isn't commonly done with these machines, that the lost votes were noticed. And, as usual, Diebold... er... Premier downplayed the discovery:

"We have not seen this particular condition anywhere else in Ohio or anywhere else in the country."

Is it really that difficult for the company to admit that it screwed up? For quite some time now, pretty much every investigation and every more detailed look at any kind of e-voting equipment have turned up similar failures. For the company to brush it off because it hasn't seen "this particular condition" anywhere else is ridiculous. It does make you wonder, though, why anyone would ever buy such equipment and use it in an actual election.

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More Votes Lost By Diebold; Discovered By Unique Voting Transparency Project

from the reliable,-huh? dept

For years and years Diebold Election Systems (now Premier Election Solutions) had always vehemently denied that its e-voting or optical vote scanning machines had any problems -- despite mounds and mounds of evidence of problems. We were shocked, this past summer, when the company finally admitted to a glitch with some of its machines, but the company still downplayed the significance of this, claiming that it didn't believe the glitch (which loses votes) had actually impacted any elections.

Yet, even after this glitch was officially revealed, in the election just last month, we're now finding out that Diebold machines caused 200 lost votes in an election in California. Even worse, no one would even know about this at all if it weren't for a highly ambitious and very unique program set up by some voting activists to ensure there was real transparency. They convinced the local government to let them scan every single ballot and put it online for anyone to view. It was that separate process where they discovered the ballot counts didn't match, and that Diebold seemed to show absolutely no records of the missing ballots, despite having scanned them.

Makes you kinda wonder how many other areas lost votes that absolutely no one knows about because they didn't have such a system in place, huh?

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When We Said We Were In Favor Of Open Source Voting, This Isn't What We Meant

from the a-bit-more-openness-please dept

We've often wondered why various governments haven't mandated open source e-voting systems. After all, if a free and democratic election is supposed involve true transparency into the voting process, it's hard to see how proprietary software can be allowed. However, the big e-voting companies have been staunch supporters of keeping their solutions proprietary. Except... it may turn out that Premier Election Solutions (which was better known as Diebold until it changed its name to get away from the mocking laughter) is actually using some open source software... and not abiding by the license. Artifex Software is suing Premier for apparently using its GPL'd software and not adhering to the GPL terms. Of course, we should note that Diebold (er... Premier) has suggested in the past that it might eventually open source its own product, so maybe a little legal nudge will push it over the edge.

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Diebold/Premier Actually Admits Its Machines Are Faulty! And That It Lied About Antivirus Software...

from the wonders-never-cease dept

Consider me to be in a state of shock. For nearly half a decade Diebold has always responded in the identical way to every single report of a problem or security vulnerability with its e-voting machines: attacking those who pointed out the problem and claiming it really wasn't a problem at all. This has happened time and time again that I'm not even sure how to react when the company (renamed Premier to get away from the Diebold name stigma) has finally admitted that its machines have a flaw that drops votes. Oops. It's warning 34 states that use the machines of the problem which was highlighted in the lawsuit Ohio filed against Premiere/Diebold. Not only that, but it's admitting the flaw in the software has been in the software for the past decade.

So, uh, why was the company blaming anti-virus software just a couple months ago?

It should also make us question Premier/Diebold's longstanding claim that independent outsiders should not be allowed to inspect its machines for problems. Of course, Diebold execs are already downplaying all of this, claiming that they were "confident" that this hadn't actually impacted any elections, though they offer no proof of that. The company's president admits he's "distressed" that they were wrong in their previous analysis, but he fails to explain why the company is so against letting outsides inspect the machines to avoid such flaws. In the meantime, the company insists that the problem will be patched in time for the November election, and I'm sure we're all confident that there won't be any other problems with their machines, right?

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