ES&S To Buy Diebold, Blackbox Voting To Sue

Diebold/Premier Election Systems is being purchased by Election Systems & Software (ES&S). According to a Black Box Voting source within the companies, there will be a conference call among key people at the companies within the next couple hours. An ES&S/Diebold-Premier acquisition would consolidate most US voting under one privately held manufacturer.

Can we get serious about election integrity already?

IF only this were a joke! I suggest you go see Uncounted.

Have we solved any of these problems? If not, then our discussion of which candidate – Obama, Paul, Clinton, Huckabee, Romney – doesn’t mean anything. Seriously, if this isn't fixed what are we talking about? Just checking. I'm off to buy a yurt.

How very odd. Or not. Times stenographer Christopher Drew:

A laboratory that has tested most of the nation’s electronic voting systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests.

Experts on voting systems say the Ciber problems underscore longstanding worries about lax inspections in the secretive world of voting-machine testing. The action by the federal Election Assistance Commission seems certain to fan growing concerns about the reliability and security of the devices.

No shit, Sherlock. Go read the whole story, before it disappears behind the pay wall. You will look in vain for any mention of Ciber's affiliations with the Republican Party.

How odd.

Or not.

Of course, we were covering this back in 2004:

Keep in mind: it's not just the votes "counted" by these machines, it's often the voter rolls of eligible voters as well. Keep an eye on Brad's place over the next few days. He's doing Pulitzer level work of late, for all our SCLM takes note. Some choice selections:

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Whoever said Republicans were incompetent? They've made elections really, really easy to steal:

Meanwhile, votes in about half of the 45 most competitive Congressional races, including contests in Florida, Georgia and Indiana, will be cast on electronic machines that provide no independent means of verification.

“In a close race, a machine error in one precinct could leave the results in doubt and the losing candidates won’t be able to get a recount,” said Warren Stewart, policy director for VoteTrustUSA, an advocacy group that has criticized electronic voting.

And there will be machine problems, if only because there aren't enough technicians to run the machines:

Oh. My. God. Via the really smart people at Freedom to Tinker:

On Wednesday we did a live demo for our Princeton Computer Science colleagues of the vote-stealing software described in our paper and video. Afterward, Chris Tengi, a technical staff member, asked to look at the key that came with the voting machine. He noticed an alphanumeric code printed on the key, and remarked that he had a key at home with the same code on it. The next day he brought in his key and sure enough it opened the voting machine.

This seemed like a freakish coincidence--until we learned how common these keys are.

Chris's key was left over from a previous job, maybe fifteen years ago. He said the key had opened either a file cabinet or the access panel on an old VAX computer. A little research revealed that the exact same key is used widely in office furniture, electronic equipment, jukeboxes, and hotel minibars. It's a standard part, and like most standard parts it's easily purchased on the Internet. We bought several keys from an office furniture key shop--they open the voting machine too. We ordered another key on eBay from a jukebox supply shop. The keys can be purchased from many online merchants.

Nuts, anyone?

We really did, you know. So did lots of other people. From the WaPo, breaking news on broken elections:

Election Day in Montgomery County and parts of Prince George's opened in chaos and frustration this morning, as a series of problems and missteps left thousands of citizens unable to vote or forced to cast provisional ballots.

[snip]Montgomery County's Board of Elections held an emergency meeting and agreed to petition the Circuit Court to extend voting times until 9 p.m.

No electronic voting machines were operational when polls opened at 7 a.m. in Montgomery County, because election officials failed to deliver the required voter authorization cards to the county's 238 precincts. Voters were supposed to be given provisional paper ballots instead. But several precincts quickly ran out of those backup ballots.

LambMaster Kos is running with this hard so check there for closer-to-realtime updates than we can provide.

I know the most important thing in the world is to give ABC better ratings for it's interminable bore, but if you've got some time between the football game and your daily dose of Republican propaganda, you should check this out. Helen and Harry have this pithy commentary:

He was sworn in weeks before the election was certified, but his position in Congress cannot be questioned by a judge, or at least, that's this judge's ruling. The state's voters have no legal standing to challenge this — because Bilbray was sworn in.

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