Premiere/Diebold: You're Doing It Wrong

from the a-little-Friday-humor dept

Earlier this week, we wrote about Ohio's lawsuit against Premiere Elections Systems -- better known by its previous name, Diebold -- where we noted Premiere's claim that the problems were the fault of antivirus software. That didn't make much sense, as we noted, but Randall Munroe has explained just how ridiculous this is (in a way that only he can) with his latest xkcd comic:

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Ohio Sues Diebold/Premiere Over Lost E-Voting Votes

from the instead-of-a-fine,-the-lost-votes-would-be-great dept

You may recall late last year that an investigation in Ohio turned up that all e-voting machines used in the state during the 2004 election had malfunctioning problems. Earlier this year, officials declared machines from that election a crime scene to be investigated, and now Ohio has filed a lawsuit against Premiere Election Solutions, the company better known as Diebold (it changed its name after tons of bad press).

Premiere/Diebold, of course, were at the heart of early stories about e-voting machine flaws, and the company consistently fought against anyone who suggested there was anything wrong with its machines, despite overwhelming evidence. Instead, it tried to bully those who spoke out against the company, or paint them as extremist kooks. Yet, with each passing story, it appears that the concerns were very, very real. As per usual, Premiere/Diebold is doing little to actually address the issues in this particular lawsuit, claiming:

"We certainly feel strongly that we, in fact, have fulfilled the contract with the state of Ohio. It's a high-quality voting system that continues to operate in many, many Ohio counties with great success."

I'm not sure if the "contract" allowed for completely dropping votes, but assuming it did, that's hardly something to brag about. Also, pointing out that other states use the same machines isn't a defense -- it should be an alarm for those other states to start investigating as well. Other than that, Premiere/Diebold has relied on its usual defense: "It wasn't our fault!" Instead, the company claims that antivirus software interfered with the voting tabulation system. That's a pretty weak excuse -- especially since (as Ohio points out) the system was certified with antivirus software installed. Besides, what kind of software is Premiere/Diebold building if antivirus software causes it to lose votes? Not the type of software I'd want running my elections.

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Colorado The Latest To Ditch E-Voting Machines

from the sounds-familiar dept

Just days after Ohio announced problems with all of the e-voting machines used in that state, Colorado has decertified e-voting machines from all four major vendors in the space, noting serious problems with them all, including a 1% error rate in counting ballots (1%!). So at what point do the e-voting companies stop stonewalling and finally just admit that they need to start again from scratch? At this point, it's beyond clear that none of these firms is even the least bit trustworthy -- and yet, they continue to protest these decertifications, despite piles upon piles of evidence that these machines have serious problems.

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