This just in, from CNN's technology desk:
Voting machines could bring Election Day glitches
Glitches! Wer gewusst haben könnte?!
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On July 13, the Pensacola, Fla.-based law firm of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed a “qui tam” lawsuit in U.S. District Court, alleging that Diebold and other electronic voting machine (EVM) companies fraudulently represented to state election boards and the federal government that their products were “unhackable.”
[...]
Matt Schultz, an attorney with Kennedy’s law firm, Levin Papantonio, describes the process of competition for HAVA’s contractor funds as “a race to the bottom.” “There is no question in my mind that these companies sacrificed security and accuracy, mass-producing a cheap product to cash in on tons of federal money,” Schultz says. “It’s an industry-wide problem.”
Qui tam lawsuits stem from a provision in the Civil False Claims Act, which Congress passed in 1863 at the behest of President Abraham Lincoln to respond to price gouging, use of defective products and substitution of inferior material by contractors supplying the Union Army. The provision allows private citizens to file a suit in the name of the U.S. government charging fraud by government contractors and other entities that receive or use government funds.
InTheseTimes Jul. 2006
Qui tam! Quem pode ter sabido?
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...something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad never received their ballots — or received them too late to vote — after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations. A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states, was discovered shredding Democratic registrations. In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes, malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots. Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment — roughly one for every 100 cast.
RFKennedyJr rollingstone Jun. 2006
Chi dovrebbe ha saputo?
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AVI RUBEN: Well I think it’s very interesting. What’s interesting to me is that this action happened not because of security problems, per se, but because of the way Diebold handled the systems once they were in the field, putting unauthorized patches in, misleading people about what they were doing, it was more of their behaviour than the actual security problems which I think are just as big a deal. I think there are going to be ramifications for a lot of states. Ohio is one of the states that’s really on the fence right now, they’re purchasing electronic voting machines, but they still have many purchases to go, that they’re planning on making, that have been held up for awhile because of security concerns.
DemNow! May 2004
Qui pourrait savoir?
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BEV HARRIS:But the Diebold company itself is interesting, it does have very strong Republican ties, specifically to the Bush administration. They have a C.E.O. named Wally Odell He is a close crony of Dick Cheney, in fact just recently in July he had Cheney come to his house and he held a fundraiser for Cheney that raised $500,000. They have a board of directors member who is one of the Bush Pioneers. That is a small and elite group that gives huge amounts of money to the presidential campaign. This fellow’s name is W.H. Timcan.
DemNow! Aug. 2003
Quién podría haber sabido?
