Talk:Diebold
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How 'bout this latest news: Diebold has a single key design that opens every voting machine, and they posted a picture of the key on their own site. The key can be, and was, duplicated from that photo, and as has been proven by Princeton, all a hacker needs is 60 seconds with an open machine to infect it, and all connected machines, with a virus. [1] and [2]
Question: How wide spread is the use of diebold voting machines? Anyone have info on this?
I have seen them as far away as small ferry ports in Thailand, Image:Http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/7451/operationstatusvb8.jpg
The following quotes are really flamebait.
- I don't see what makes them flamebait or why they should all be deleted. They are certainly shocking and funny (in a dark sort of way) but so what? They are accurate, pertinent and revealing. I'd like to see at least a few of them go back, perhaps in a new section near the end like "Quotations from Internal Diebold Documents" --LeeHunter 00:37, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The may also be copyright, though fair use could cover our use. Noting that there is controversy about the election systems is on topic. Noting that documents exist, and links to them is on topic. The exceprts are not - at least not now when they make up the majority of the artical. One good sample might a good idea though.
“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.” [3]
“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.” [4]
“I feel that over the next year, if the current management team stays in place, the Global [Election Management System] 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.” [5]
“[T]he bugzilla historic data recovery process is complete. Some bugs were irrecoverably lost and they will have to be re-found and re-submitted, but overall the loss was relatively minor.” [6]
“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).” [7]
“If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.” [8]
“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".” [9]
“[...] while reading some of Paranoid Bev’s scribbling.” [10]
“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.” [11] (emphasis added)
“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.” [12] One Member's Position
- “[I am] committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year.” Walden O'Dell, CEO of Diebold, in mid-2003 invitation to Republican fundraiser at his home in September[13] 142.177.168.90 17:27, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This article is not an article at all. It's a journalistic hit piece. I do not like black box voting at all and Diebold sounds like horrible (not to mention doomed) technology to me (I prefer paper or punch card systems), but this article is so POV and so poorly written that I could barely scratch the surface when trying to NPOV it. I strongly suspect it would be better to throw it out and start over again. Has anyone remotely capable of dispassionate writing authored any of this article? Daniel Quinlan 09:52, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)
Working on the NPOV edits (more like rewrite). I have a question about the statement that "The software architecture common to both [Election Systems & Software, Inc. and Diebold Election Systems, Inc.] is a creation of Mr. Urosevich's company I-Mark." I can't find any support for this statement, and I get the sense that it is a misconception. Can anyone confirm or deny this statement? I'll look into it further later on. Right now, I'm going to sleep. -- Anthony DiPierro 09:12, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Jim March, an electronic voting activist, has made a number of posts on slashdot with some excellent information: [14] [15] [16]. They include a lot of interesting information, like how the head programmer of the GEMS system was previously arrested for computer-aided accounting fraud. This should probably be integrated into the article in an NPOV manner. --NeuronExMachina 07:42, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
[edit] from article
Smuj added :
- In a fundraising letter to Republicans, Walden O'Dell wrote he was, "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president [G.W.Bush]."
While this is true, it shouldn't just be stuck at the top of the article like it was. --Whosyourjudas (talk) 02:02, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Diebold Election Systems
Is there any reason to have a separate article at Diebold Election Systems? It would make sense if there were a lot to say about Diebold relating to its other divisions or general corporate history or whatever, but the Diebold article is entirely about voting machines. I don't know how much anyone would ever be moved to write about Diebold's ATM machines and the like. I suggest merging the DES information here and converting Diebold Election Systems into a redirect. JamesMLane 07:21, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Makes sense to me, Diebold is encyclopedia worthy only because of DES. --Zenyu 13:54, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)
- I don't think we should do away with the Diebold article - it should just describe the company from a NPOV. The controversy is really about the election systems division -- their ATMs aren't controversial, right? So we should move the stuff about voting machines to Diebold Election Systems and merge, I believe.Bryan 16:46, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
-
- Somehow we ended up with both articles, and the same material in both. As someone points out below, the DES is only a few percent of the company's business. OTOH, that is the portion which generates the news and controversy and which overwhelms the rest of the article. We can decide again if they should be merged (for real this time) or not. Perhaps it would be easier to edit the DES material with it as a separate entity. It's poorly organized now, neither chronological nor thematic. This is an election year so our DES coverage will become increasingly important. Cheers, -Willmcw 01:30, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I pulled *this* tidbit out for grammar and verification reasons. I would like a cite for Procomp being involved with Diebold Election systems, and this should probably go in the Diebold Election Systems article. "The electronic voting technology was supported by his subsidiary in South America, PROCOMP, which have the know-how of this since the '90."
[edit] Passive voice etc
From the article:
- The term "black box voting" was coined to describe machines that, like those made by Diebold, use closed source software, do not print paper ballots, and do not use any reliable digital authentication techniques.
Who coined it?
- Some experts claim that this structure is easily compromised...
Which experts?
I urge anyone who can answer these questions to do so, in order to Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms. Graue 23:48, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
Our own article on Black Box Voting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Box_Voting both notes the name of the coiner of the term and provides a semi-credible cite. -Anon
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/11811936.htm
This ref link at the bottom is dead. Couldn't find a replacement. Not sure if quote should be removed if it has no ref.
- Thanks for noticing that. I replaced it with a different link to the same article. -Willmcw 17:54, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Diebold safes?
Any connection to the Diebold Corporation in Ohio that Eliot Ness was chairman of after Capone was nabbed? -Fuzzy 20:33, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
- Never mind. I see the brief mention up top of them manufacturing vaults. I lost it in the massive tide of voting controversy. -Fuzzy 20:37, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Diebold CEO leaves (someone add this please)
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Diebold_CEO_resigns_after_reports_of_1212.html
--grazon 21:19, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
In your article the CEO did leave. The threatened lawsuit is mentioned. There is now a PR Newswire article about the *filed* lawsuit we could link: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=106584&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=796582&highlight=
I don't know if that last link is appropriate for the article, so I'm not adding it.
[edit] Notice The Relative Financial Importance of Election Systems to Diebold
If you look at Diebold's Q1 '05 SEC filing, you'll observe that election systems are about 2.4% of Diebold's global sales revenue. It might be worthwhile to put this surprising tidbit in the article. Cite:
Excerpt from Q1 '05 SEC filing:
Revenue Summary by Products and Services
For the quarter ended
March 31:
-----------------------
2005 2004
------------- ---------
Financial self-service:
Products $ 173,347 $ 154,262
Services 215,156 207,495
------------- ---------
Total financial self-service 388,503 361,757
Security:
Products 62,535 57,415
Services 83,340 64,210
------------- ---------
Total security 145,875 121,625
------------- ---------
Total financial self-service security 534,378 483,382
Election systems 5,856 14,873
------------- ---------
Total Revenue $ 540,234 $ 498,255
Cite: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/sec?s=dbd&partner=mf -> Click on 5-May-05 10-Q Quarterly Report Full Filing at EDGAR
[edit] Where's the headquarters
A while back I corrected the location of the Diebold headquarters in this article, changing it from North Canton to Green. Today it was changed back, with a reference to Diebold's own web page. I'll explain why I changed it to Green. The address for the headquarters on the web page is
Diebold World Headquarters Canton, Ohio, USA 5995 Mayfair Road North Canton, OH 44720
This appears to indicate that the headquarters is in North Canton. I looked up the address in maps.google.com, though, and found that the location is just north of Mt. Pleasant Rd. Unfortunately I can't find an online map with boundaries, but I looked in my Commercial Survey map of Akron, Summit and Portage Counties and found that Mt. Pleasant Road forms the boundary between Summit and Stark counties, with Green being to the north and Jackson Township to the south. North Canton is south of that line. In fact, the road is only called Mayfair in Green. It is called Pittsburg Rd. south south of Mt. Pleasant. What happened was that Green is only recently a city, and before that it was served by a variety of post offices outside of its boundaries. This area is served by the North Canton post office, but the headquarters physically resides in Green. --Beirne 00:48, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Diebold HQ Location
Whoops. I did the edit to North Canton. I'm actually in Green, and I never realized Diebold HQ was as well. They also have a satellite office (a field service branch) in Green, which humorously enough has a Uniontown ZIP code. My sincerest apologies.
[edit] Why John Diebold and Choicepoint in the article?
The See Also lines include reference to John Diebold and Choicepoint. Is John Diebold the business management expert from the same family that founded the Diebold, Inc. in this article? I spent 15 minutes Googling and found no direct link mentioned between the two. One article discussed Diebold voting machines and John Diebold together, but did not establish a direct relationship. It makes sense to have a link to him in any case to steer the misdirected, I suppose, but it might make sense to have a disclaimer if there isn't a relationship, lest we confuse someone. Choicepoint does come up in discussions of voting irregularities, etc. Perhaps the Choicepoint link belongs on the Diebold Election Systems page?
- I agree. The John Diebold of the article seems to have had nothing to do with the subject of this article. Choicepoint is only tangentially related to DES, as part of the election-related controversy even though they do not make voting systems. -Willmcw 05:04, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Voting machine
They have a voting machine called "Diebold AccuVote TS". http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/06/07/31/1646246.shtml
[edit] National Election Data Archive information
The National Election Data Archive, headed by Kathy Dopp, keeps current with information, articles and analysis on the Diebold machines.
Here is the link: National Election Data Archive
[edit] Deletion of electronic voting additions from Jklappenbach
I'm the one who's been putting each new Diebold outrage into the Security Concerns section - so believe me that I'm on your side in this issue. But what's been added is not directly relevant to Diebold [and Soapboxing as well, to be perfectly frank - however much I agree with it], so it really can't stay. I would suggest putting that kind of material into Electronic_voting#Opposition_to_Electronic_Voting. Ribonucleic 00:57, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
- The material on the voting belongs in Diebold Election Systems. This article is devoted to the much larger parent company. -Will Beback 04:05, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] ABC News on security concerns
Not sure if this is the right article for it, but ABC News has an article [17] on electronic voting and come security concerns. An interesting quote from a computer security expert:
- Diebold's "system is utterly unsecured. The entire cyber-security community is begging them to come back to reality and secure our nation's voting."
If the concerns are really that serious then I think the article needs to reflect this.
- No, this is not the right article. You want Diebold Election Systems. -Will Beback 03:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] DES disambiguation link on top of the page
This link led directly to the Security Concerns section, instead of just the article. I've since fixed it.
