Diebold in the News!
There's a lot of good stuff over at BlackBoxVoting.com . This story about "The Election Center, which trains election workers and advises Congress and government agencies on election process issues" taking money from manufacturers of eVoting machines is the best. I've been worried about the integrity of election workers for a while. I don't like manufacturers being in control of their training. Here's some of what The Election Center's executive director, R. Doug Lewis had to say about the people who speak out against eVoting:
Lewis issued a report last year saying that "well-intentioned people, some of them even highly educated and respected, scare voters and public officials with claims that the voting equipment and/or its software can be manipulated to change the outcome of elections."
The report went on to say: "Do not be misled into believing that elections are reliant upon technology which can be manipulated... . It may be possible to do many things, but like time travel (which is theoretically possible), it is highly unlikely at this time."
Right.
This March 14th editorial from the NYTimes is also up at BlackBoxVoting.
Florida's official line is that its machines are so carefully tested, nothing can go wrong. But things already have gone wrong. In a January election in Palm Beach and Broward Counties, the victory margin was 12 votes, but the machines recorded more than 130 blank ballots. It is simply not believable that 130 people showed up to cast a nonvote, in an election with only one race on the ballot. The runner-up wanted a recount, but since the machines do not produce a paper record, there was nothing to recount.
That sounds so easy to fix. And it is. Tragically, Athan Gibbs, a man who had developed a way to fix the recount problem died in a car crash on March 12.
The 57-year-old Gibbs died as the company is on the verge of seeking certification for an improved second version of the TruVote system from the National Association of State Elections Directors. Brandon sees that as a top priority along with raising about $5 million of capital and hiring a permanent chief executive officer ''with operational skills the company needs to be a leader in its market.''
The company has competitors such as Diebold Election Systems Inc. of McKinney, Texas; Hart InterCivic of Austin, Texas, and Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif., and Election Systems & Software Inc. of Omaha, Neb.
Disinfopedia (a wiki encyclopaedia of the PR industry) has these informative profiles of the Election Center and its head:
The Election Center profile
R Doug Lewis profile
Posted by: Election Center watch | October 24, 2004 at 07:42 AM