Diebold

Why would Diebold ONLY want their machines in the two states that mattered the most, Ohio and Florida?

Don't know. Maybe they were the only ones that wanted to procure his. There is another manufacturer you know.

Why would Walden W. O'Dell, CEO of Diebold, say that his company was committed to Ohio's electoral votes to George W. Bush?

He didn't say his company was. He said he was, personally.

I would discount any theories about a Diebold conspiracy, particularly after he publicly made that comment.

Why did he make such a statement? I think you've taken it out of context. He was probably either joking or expressing his financial support for Bush. I doubt he was expressing his intention to defraud voters.

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/#breaking

MONDAY Nov 1 2004: New information indicates that hackers may be targeting the central computers counting our votes tomorrow. All county elections officials who use modems to transfer votes from polling places to the central vote-counting server should disconnect the modems now.

There is no down side to removing the modems. Simply drive the vote cartridges from each polling place in to the central vote-counting location by car, instead of transmitting by modem. "Turning off" the modems may not be sufficient. Disconnect the central vote counting server from all modems, INCLUDING PHONE LINES, not just Internet.

In a very large county, this will add at most one hour to the vote-counting time, while offering significant protection from outside intrusion.

It appears that such an attack may already have taken place, in a primary election 6 weeks ago in King County, Washington -- a large jurisdiction with over one million registered voters. Documents, including internal audit logs for the central vote-counting computer, along with modem "trouble slips" consistent with hacker activity, show that the system may have been hacked on Sept. 14, 2004. Three hours is now missing from the vote-counting computer's "audit log," an automatically generated record, similar to the black box in an airplane, which registers certain kinds of events.

COMPUTER FOLKS:

Here are the details about remote access vulnerability through the modem connecting polling place voting machines with the central vote-counting server in each county elections office. This applies specifically to all Diebold systems (1,000 counties and townships), and may also apply to other vendors. The prudent course of action is to disconnect all modems, since the downside is small and the danger is significant.

The central servers are installed on unpatched, open Windows computers and use RAS (Remote Access Server) to connect to the voting machines through telephone lines. Since RAS is not adequately protected, anyone in the world, even terrorists, who can figure out the server's phone number can change vote totals without being detected by observers.

The passwords in many locations are easily guessed, and the access phone numbers can be learned through social engineering or war dialing.

People don't want to believe they are being defrauded, so they don't believe it. Like nice little sheep.

It's been known, conclusively, for over two years now that the Diebold voting machine system is insecure and open to more than one form of attack. And yet we used them anyways, in many cases b/c it was 'too expensive' to replace with a system which prints out a paper reciept.

Surely you remember that this is the same company that delivered the Great State of Nebraska into the hands of Chuck Hagel - Republican Senator, and former CEO of Diebold - who defeated the long-time democratic opponent in DIRECT contradiction of the exit polling numbers?

http://scdc.sccs.swarthmore.edu/diebold/

Excerpts from the Diebold Memos

"Elections are not rocket science. Why is it so hard to get things right! I have never been at any other company that has been so miss [sic] managed."

"For a demonstration I suggest you fake it. Progam them both so they look the same, and then just do the upload fro [sic] the AV. That is what we did in the last AT/AV demo."

"I have become increasingly concerned about the apparent lack of concern over the practice of writing contracts to provide products and services which do not exist and then attempting to build these items on an unreasonable timetable with no written plan, little to no time for testing, and minimal resources. It also seems to be an accepted practice to exaggerate our progress and functionality to our customers and ourselves then make excuses at delivery time when these products and services do not meet expectations."


Diebold voting machines are used in 37 states and
lack even basic protection against election fraud.

"I feel that over the next year, if the current management team stays in place, the Global working environment will continue to be a chaotic mess. Global management has and will be doing the best to keep their jobs at the expense of employees. Unrealistic goals will be placed on current employees, they will fail to achieve them. If Diebold wants to keep things the same for the time being, this will only compound an already dysfunctional company. Due to the lack of leadership, vision, and self-preserving nature of the current management, the future growth of this company will continue to stagnate until change comes."

"28 of 114 or about 1 in 4 precincts called in this AM with either memory card issues "please re-insert", units that wouldn't take ballots - even after recycling power, or units that needed to be recycled. We reburned 7 memory cards, 4 of which we didn't need to, but they were far enough away that we didn't know what we'd find when we got there (bad rover communication)."

"I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here 'looking dumb'."

"Johnson County, KS will be doing Central Count for their mail in ballots. They will also be processing these ballots in advance of the closing of polls on election day. They would like to log into the Audit Log an entry for Previewing any Election Total Reports. They need this, to prove to the media, as well as, any candidates & lawyers, that they did not view or print any Election Results before the Polls closed. However, if there is a way that we can disable the reporting functionality, that would be even better.

"4K Smart cards which had never been previously programmed are being recognized by the Card Manager as manager cards. When a virgin card from CardLogix is inserted into a Spyrus (have tried CM-0-2-9 and CM-1-1-1) the prompt 'Upgrade Mgr Card?' is displayed. Pressing the ENTER key creates a valid manager card. This happens in Admin mode and Election mode."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48076-2004Jul13.html

Democrats first charged that the electronic voting was being politicized when Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Election Systems, an electronic voting machine manufacturer, pledged in a Republican fundraising letter last year that he was "committed" to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to President Bush. The company said O'Dell regrets the statement and is no longer involved in fundraising.

Larry434:

There are conflicting quotes floating around the internet, so I will admit that I could be mistaken.

I found this:

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48076-2004Jul13.html

Democrats first charged that the electronic voting was being politicized when Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Election Systems, an electronic voting machine manufacturer, pledged in a Republican fundraising letter last year that he was "committed" to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to President Bush. The company said O'Dell regrets the statement and is no longer involved in fundraising.

But as he IS the CEO of Diebold Election Systems, he DOES represent the COMPANY, does he not?

Not when he is acting as a private citizen, advocating a particular political candidate and working to get him elected.

I was also referring to THIS specific election when it became certain that both Florida and Ohio were going to be pivotal in this election. Diebold's electronic systems have already been in place for years skewing elections.

Not when he is acting as a private citizen, advocating a particular political candidate and working to get him elected.