Diebold Wants Documentary Off The Air
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in ElectionsDiebold Inc. insisted that cable network HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair.The program, “Hacking Democracy,” is scheduled to debut Thursday, , five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims that Diebold voting machines aren’t tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results.
“Hacking Democracy” is “replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting,” Diebold Election System President David Byrd said in a letter to HBO President and Chief Executive Chris Albrecht posted on Diebold’s Web site. Short of pulling the film, Monday’s letter asks for disclaimers to be aired and for HBO to post Diebold’s response on its Web site.
Something tells me the film is gonna make it on the air? Why? Well, keep reading…
Because…did you know that Diebold settled with a whistleblower in Jan 2005 over voting snafus to the tune of $2.5 million? No?
The whistle-blower lawsuit, filed by (Renton elections activist Bev) Harris in November 2003 and taken up by the California attorney general in September, said Diebold engaged in unfair business practices and made false claims about its product.It alleged that Diebold used uncertified software in elections in California. The settlement requires the company to pay millions back to a number of counties and replace some equipment, among other things.
Harris said the settlement “is a good sign. It certainly vindicated that our criticisms had validity.”
As an additional note, Bev Harris is the author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century.
You may want to check it out, as it has gotten rave reviews from Vanity Fair and Salon.com.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 and is filed under Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 1st, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Bev Harris has worked long and hard to prove that these machines are unworthy of our Democracy, and has backed up her claims repeatedly with solid documentation. On the other hand, Diebold has repeatedly proven itself to be a company that cannot be trusted. Why should we continue to entrust Democracy to machines owned and run by partisan Republicans? Let the program air!
November 2nd, 2006 at 6:20 am
Not only is it appropriate to let the program go on the air but, the people of the United States need to wake up to the reality that their democratic form of government is threatened by ANOTHER effort to privatize critical functions of government. We never had these serious doubts about the integrity of the ballot counts until these corporations got involved in the electoral process. Let’s go back to paper ballots and the old mechanical volting machines.
November 2nd, 2006 at 12:33 pm
IN the Diebold code that was examined three years ago was a provision to switch entire blocks of votes to another candidate, then to ERASE the audit logs so that the move of votes would be invisible. Why would such code even be written? In a state on the east cost in 2004 friends of mine tried to vote for Kerry, only to see their vote disappear in front of them. They tried repeatedly to vote for Kerry but could not get their vote to stay there. In desperation they voted for Bush, and the vote stayed on the screen. 2004 was stolen by the machines. We have US Senators who were elected by the machines with no provision for public audits. The only way to keep tabs on the machines is to require the ID of the CPU to be saved along with the vote tallies and that those IDs to be reported at every step of the way. Audits of election results must be public. The source code used by the manufacturers in their balloting machines and upstream machines must be public. Paper ballot trails are fine but the numbers can be juggled in the machines regardless what is reported on paper. I would also place mandatory criminal penalties on any person found to have manipulated a balloting machine or its upstream machines. I am Republican, but the danger of the electronic balloting machines threatens the very foundation of a democratic republic!
November 2nd, 2006 at 4:27 pm
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November 2nd, 2006 at 4:31 pm
We will need to pay more attention to independent exit polls (if there is such a thing in the media these days) and their correlation with what the electronic voting machines report at the end of the day. Some difference is to be expected, but we should have good statistics on the magnitude of that difference from previous elections. If the voting machines show too much of a difference, or multiple precincts show a strong bias in the same direction we have serious cause to invalidate that state’s election results.
November 6th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
[...] Not just 10 minutes, not just half…but the entire documentary that Diebold tried to get banned. [...]