BRAD BLOG BREAKING: Volusia County, FL Dumps Diebold Too!

[BradBlog]

Volusia County, FL Dumps Diebold Too!
Opts for Transparent, Accountable Elections (Instead of Diebold Elections) After a Protracted Battle...

This just in...After various protracted legal battles (funded by the National Federation for the Blind, which had received a $1 million "donation" from Diebold previously) and along with the news out of Leon County, Florida, Volusia County has now come to their senses and also decided to dump Diebold voting machines!...

URL: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002169.htm

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[meganmonkey]

1. GREAT news!

Thanks!

:bounce:

[Greeby]

2. The New Domino Effect?

One can only hope :bounce:

[Al-CIAda]

3. K&R'd

[RufusEarl]

4. The best news I've received all day, thanks!

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. May I ask, what they plan to replace Diebold with?

Before I get too happy, I'd like to know whether or not they are going to touch screens instead?

[BradBlog]

9. IT's discussed at the link...

in the original article...

Brad

[DoYouEverWonder]

13. Can I cheat just this once

and just tell me. I'm going in 50 directions at once at the moment. Thanks.

[never_get_over_it]

18. How about paper

if its good enough for the Iraqis it good enough for me here in FL - hell I'd even stick my finger in purple ink if I could be sure that my voted counted the way I cast it - which having voted in Brevard County in 2004 I'm not at all sure my vote counted for John Kerry.....

[FreedomAngel82]

26. Yep

Here we have a paper trail. I think it's counted on a machine but there's at least a paper trail and I feel bit safer than just a voting machine with no paper trail. And with the paper it's pretty big in letters and you use a sharpie pen to bubble next to the person you want. It's easy to read for the elderly and I've never heard of any problems here. Our now mayor was winning all the polls (but one) leading up to our election. All these voting machine's should be banned from our elections.

[malaise]

30. I had the same thought n/t

[NanceGreggs]

6. Too bad it took this long ...

... but better late than never.

If this trend continues, a lot of Republicans up for re-election next year are going to be pre-emptively packing up their offices ...

[in_cog_ni_to]

7. WooHoo!!!!

Can you FEEL IT? Can you feel the house of BUSH falling??? I can! Their arrogance is finally catching up to them. 'bout damn time.

[Cleetus]

8. they don't need them any more

Bush is finished after his second term. Not even Diebold machines can help him in three years. The machines did their job. Fuckface stole his second election with help from wally. Now that the job is done, they're "throwing the smoking gun" in the river.

Paper-trail-less ballots. I can't believe these guys got away with this.

[cry baby]

10. this has been a good day! nt

[sabra]

11. Thank you for the update

:yourock:

[hiley]

12. recommend

thanks Brad.
:hi:

[Tiggeroshii]

14. Things are looking better, but will they

entirely withdraw from the state?

I guess only time will tell. Will somebody please tell me why there isn't as much focus on Sequoia and ES&S as there is on Diebold? Are they just as vulnerable as Diebold or is their coding transparent? I wonder if any similar actions can be taken against those two companies as they have been against Diebold.

...Been thinking about starting a group for voter awareness and my county uses a lot of Sequoia machines. Haven't really checked on their status, but I really dn't have a lot of faith in them.

[BradBlog]

15. Sequoia and ES&S Not much better...

Look into what's going on in New Mexico and Washington state in re: Sequoia.

Diebold is getting the bulk of the "love" at the current moment for a number of reasons. But if the folks at ES&S and Sequoia believe they're off the hook...they couldn't be wronger.

Brad

[Tiggeroshii]

17. It seems as though there has been more controversy with Diebold

than either of those two companies. Do you know why states like Florida and California are putting more scrutiny among Diebold rather than those other two companies?

Thanks for that. I will continue to look into the New Mexico and Washington ioncidents. I've heard of the NM one, but not Washington. Thanks again.

[Peace Patriot]

22. Diebold execs gave 100% of their campaign contributions to Repubs,

and (until early this week--he just resigned) had a CEO, Wally O'Dell, who was a Bush/Cheney campaign chair and promised in writing to "help deliver Ohio" to Bush/Cheney in 2004. For starters. They have programmers who were convicted felons. They were/are also pushing paperless touchscreen voting (called DREs--Direct Recording somethings), and it seems their machines are just plain crappy (in addition to being hackable, and containing secret programming), and repeatedly fail tests. Built on Windows. Former Dem CA Sec of State Kevin Shelley banned Diebold touchscreens in Calif, prior to the 2004 election, and sued the company because Diebold LIED to him about the security of these machines.

The recent tests in Florida were of Diebold OPTICAL SCAN voting machines (not DREs), which are much more widespread than DREs. They repeatedly failed security tests. (Hackers easily hacked into them.)

ES&S has similar electronic voting machine architecture (they were one company at one time), and was initially funded by far rightwing billionaire H. Ahmanson (a real Nazi). (Diebold and ES&S are now run by two brothers, and dominate 80% of the market.) ES&S does both optiscan and touchscreen.

As for Sequoia, they now employ former Repub CA Sec of State Bill Jones and his chief aide Alfie Charles, who brought this electronic voting nightmare to Calif, then left office to work for one of the companies (Sequoia), a completely corrupt thing to do.

ALL of these electronic voting systems include 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code (software and firmware), with virtually no audit/recount controls. If they have no paper trail (1/3 of the country in 2004), there is zero audit/recount capability. If they have some kind of "paper trail," it may or may not be useless--it may just duplicate the machine results. A "voter verified paper audit trail" (VVPAT) is better--you have a separate record of the vote. A "voter verified paper BALLOT" is best since its legal standing as the vote of record is secure. But even if you get a good paper record, try to get a recount! It's been made virtually impossible for ordinary citizens, and not easy for candidates. Audits (automatic recounts) are 1% at best. This is NOT sufficient for electronic voting. (10% automatic recount of the vote, at least, is needed.)

And It gets worse. In addition to individual voting machines, you have the central tabulators. (Diebold's are called GEMS.) ALL votes--absentee ballots, paper ballots of every kind, not just the electronic votes--are fed into computers and go the central tabulators, which are ALSO extremely insecure and hackable. The only thing you gain with a paper ballot is that, IF there is a recount (big if) you have a tangible paper record to compare the electronic results to. It also may deter some fraud (fear of getting caught).

ES&S and Sequoia are little better--in fact, no better--than Diebold on insecurity and hackability. They seem to be a little more stable. That's it. All have secret programming. The big three lavishly lobby election officials, and are corrupt Republican corporations. There is no reason to trust any of them. They should all be banished from our election system.

We need to have complete transparency in elections. You can't have that with private corporations running elections. How could they make a profit? (Yup. Profiting from you vote.)

We could conceivably do electronic elections using non-profit corporations and OPEN SOURCE CODE. But the stench around electronic voting is so bad, just give me a PAPER BALLOT, please, and LET ME SEE YOU COUNT MY VOTE, hands on the table, at human speed.

[Tiggeroshii]

24. Couldn't we just get a campaign to require open source code

by all the machines like the did in South Carolina? Diebold seems to have jsut given up because of that and if they really are just partisan tools, all thse comapnies would go out of business if open source code were required by law in every state.

[FreedomAngel82]

27. I haven't heard of Sequoia machine's

I think ALL machine's should be looked at. I think it's just Diebold because of all the press and they use them the most. Remember their CEO wrote Bush a letter stating he will deliver Ohio for Bush. ES&S machine's I don't trust either. Look at how Hagel got "elected" in Nebraska. ES&S is a cousin company to Diebold so they are related and they all serve the same purpose.

[bonito]

16. Great news!

I always knew we had good people here in volusia.

[lonestarnot]

19. Two more bite the dust hey hey and another one gone and another one gone

and another one bites the dust!

[freedomfries]

20. kick and thanks for posting brad!

:toast:

[Itchinjim]

21. My sister and her idiot freeper husband live in Volusia County,

so Diebold or no Diebold the cons are still going to have at least one vote in DeLand.

[farmbo]

23. Its started: The Rage Against the Machines!

Keep up the good fight on DU and Bradblog!

[bleever]

28. "The Rage Against the Machines!"

That's great.

:thumbsup:

[FreedomAngel82]

25. This is wonderful!!

Thank you for sharing. Yay Florida!!! I just wish there was something to do about Ohio.... :\

[bleever]

29. Thanks, Brad. Most excellent.

:yourock: