At What Point is Diebold Wrong?
Diebold Election Systems is a subsidiary of Diebold, Incorporated. Diebold is known for making many ATMs, vaults, and even most of the tubes and whatnot at your local bank drive-through. Diebold Election Systems is known for making the worlds most unreliable and unsecure voting systems.
So why do I care? Well this would make an excellent case study for the application of software engineering. The vast majority of systems are requirements driven. Just imagine how the project starts... We need a system that ____. You would think that the requirements for a voting machine would... uh... you know... let people vote. Of course it isn't that simple but you have to imagine reliability and security are among the top requirements of the system.
Since these systems have been used, it has been said that one person cracked a Diebold system in less than two hours using a hotel key and a laptop. Diebold had to pay a huge sum to California for selling them machines that were faulty. In one case here in Louisiana, a politician who lost her election went to the warehouse where the machines are kept and found that some machines were actually wired wrong. She would press the button by her name and the opponent's name would light up as if she voted for her opponent.
"How can this happen?" isn't even the most interesting question in this case. The most interesting question is: "Why is this continuing to happen?"
Despite the loads of past problems... despite the multitude of sites that outline how to easily hack the machines... despite all of that, Diebold continues to back its product. Diebold continues to say that the machines should not give receipts to voters or even keep a paper tally in addition to the electronic tally. At what point is Diebold wrong?
So why do I care? Well this would make an excellent case study for the application of software engineering. The vast majority of systems are requirements driven. Just imagine how the project starts... We need a system that ____. You would think that the requirements for a voting machine would... uh... you know... let people vote. Of course it isn't that simple but you have to imagine reliability and security are among the top requirements of the system.
Since these systems have been used, it has been said that one person cracked a Diebold system in less than two hours using a hotel key and a laptop. Diebold had to pay a huge sum to California for selling them machines that were faulty. In one case here in Louisiana, a politician who lost her election went to the warehouse where the machines are kept and found that some machines were actually wired wrong. She would press the button by her name and the opponent's name would light up as if she voted for her opponent.
"How can this happen?" isn't even the most interesting question in this case. The most interesting question is: "Why is this continuing to happen?"
Despite the loads of past problems... despite the multitude of sites that outline how to easily hack the machines... despite all of that, Diebold continues to back its product. Diebold continues to say that the machines should not give receipts to voters or even keep a paper tally in addition to the electronic tally. At what point is Diebold wrong?
posted by John W. Burris at
8:01 AM
1 Comments:
I think I can answer that Johnny. Diebold is wrong when enough people here about it. I have never heard of Diebold and now I will not forget that name. Maybe if enough people put it out in the blogosphere the "mainstream media" will pick up on this and put it out there for everyone, the problem will be rectified. I guarantee you that if O'Reilly or Hannity got there hands on some concrete proof of this they would get it out there. As much as the libs complain about the voting system I would assume that they might even go along with it. If what you say is true, more people need to know about this. I don't want to go vote and my vote not count. I debate politics because I vote, and therefore I have the right.
--Billy
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Anonymous, at 5:41 PM
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