How wrong is HBO's movie "Hacking Democracy", about Diebold voting machines?

Question

HBO claimed that Diebold machines wrongly added and subtracted votes in the 2000 elections. Is this what Democrats are kicking about?

Diebold answers that they weren't even in the voting machine business in 2000. See it on Yahoo financials, ticker symbol

Ticker symbol is DBD

Answer 1

That is when they went IPO. You aren't very smart are you.

Answer 2

There is no reason to disbelieve Diebold's statement that it was not in the business in 2000 since that is easily checked and there would be little point in misrepresenting it. However, I am not pleased with the lack of trackability of electronic voting. I urge that all the machines have printers attached (printers are dirt cheap these days) which would print out a paper ballot with the voter's selections marked. These would be clearly readable and unambiguous, and the voter could verify the selection and deposit the ballot in a box. In the event of any question, the paper ballots could be counted and the tally compared against the electronic total. The State of Washington is moving toward doing this.

Answer 3

The election was fair there may have been discrepancies but there were impartial discrepancies on both sides. There is no way of “stealing a vote”. I worked the polls before and there are people there watching what you do every step of the way, and once you report you do not leave until after everything has been counted it there are any discrepancies everything is counted again. And there is a system set up so you know how many ballots were cast and how many ballots were used. If those numbers don’t match then you have a problem. They might be off by 1 out of 6000 but still reliable. Whenever democrats lose anything they cry foul. When someone doesn’t agree with them they label them (sexist, racist, bigot, facist, etc.) or/and they try to censor them. If the dems would have won the 2000 election there would not be a documentary about the 2000 election.

Answer 4

I did not get to see the HBO movie (I hope someone taped it so I can get a look sometime)

I'm a life long Ohioan.

I can tell you that prior to the 2004 election, they were noticing problems with these machines, during the elections and after they noticed alot more.

Soon after we found out our Secretary of State, Republican Ken Blackwell owned stock in Diebold. Rumors starting surfacing.

Regardless of your party affiliation, it does look very unfavorable as to whether the final votes were real or not.

Answer 5

I just finished watching this documentary and my opinion is this. The vendors are strictly in the business of making a profit. Profit is not a bad thing unless it infringes on the rights of others. Our founding fathers worked to guarantee the wishes of the voter to be able to be counted in the elections of this country.

I am satisfied that the entire voting process is suspect and is sorely in need of a complete overhaul. It left me feeling as if the entire voting process is corrupt and controlled by people who care not for the health and welfare of this country and will do anything to insure they line their pockets.

This response is neither Liberal nor Conservative but from one who loves his freedom and is seeing it eroded in the name of profit.

Answer 6

It isn't just Diebold, many of the machines (including optical scan) can be manipulated, and it wasn't just 2000. Yes, there were irregularities that went both ways (but strongly favored one side both elections of those particular elections...).

In 2004 in Ohio over 10,000 "over votes" were made by a machine in a district that only had a fraction of that who voted -- so it was a "glitch" -- and it was easy to catch....

But ask yourself this -- Most of these electronic Voting Machine Companies are doing business in high security places --like ATM machines, etc. If the software is that bad that just a mere 100 people touching a touch screen screws up the caliberation, to "flip" a vote, why should we trust them with anything else that is important to us?

Touch screens have been around for over 10 years -- as a waitress I used touch screens to order food, and that was in 1990! So why, now, 16 years later, do touch screens suddenly "glitch" out in times when they shouldn't?

Believe me, if a few McDonald restaurants got a "glitch" in their drive-through machines that selected every big mac as fish sandwich, and 100s if not 1000s of people were affected on the same day, all over the country -- there would be outrage! McDonalds would bend over backwards to make the issue correct again.

Without open code, and a paper ballot (that goes into a lock box as part of the machine -- not becomes a "receipt" that one carries home...) we can never be sure that our elections are honest. Additionally, when Secretaries of State stop or block attempts to verify election results, (and refuse to investigate irregularities, which is part of their job description) then we have a problem. The 2004 recount in Ohio was a fiasco, with people at the election office and state level blocking and not allowing a valid recount to happen. I don't care who the "winner" is -- all I want to know is that everyone has the same chance to vote. When a person has to choose between waiting 2 hours to vote or being disciplined or fired for waiting in line to vote, that's not democracy.

FOR THOUGHT:
Who owns the machines?

ES&S:
Chuck Hagel first ran for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska in 1996. Electronic voting machines owned by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) reported that he had won both the primaries and the general election in unprecedented victories. His 1996 victory was considered one of the biggest upsets of that election. He was the first Republican to win a Nebraska senatorial campaign in 24 years and won virtually every demographic group, including many largely black communities that had never before voted Republican.

Six years later Hagel ran again against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. He was re-elected to his second term with 83% of the vote: the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska. Again, the votes were counted by ES&S, now the largest voting machine company in America.

While these victories could be dismissed simply as a Republican upset, a January 2003 article in the independent Washington paper The Hill revealed interesting details about Hagel's business investments and casts a different light on his election successes. Chuck Hagel was CEO of ES&S (then AIS) until 1995 and he is still a major stockholder of the parent company of ES&S, McCarthy & Company.

In Florida, ground zero for election problems, ES&S retained the services of a former secretary of state and one-time running mate of Governor Jeb Bush. In 2001, Global Election Systems (Diebold's predecessor) hired the former chair of Florida's Republican Party, the former running mate of a previous governor, and a former environmental advisor to Jeb Bush, according to the Miami Herald. The lobbyist trying to win the $24.5 million Miami-Dade contract for ES&S was a top GOP lawyer who worked against the recount in 2000. The Votomatic punch-card machines at the center of the 2000 Florida election debacle were, ironically enough, also manufactured by ES&S.

Diebold:
Diebold’s current CEO Walden “Wally” O’Dell, reside in Columbus’ northwest suburb Upper Arlington. O’Dell is on record stating that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President” this year. On September 26, 2003, he hosted an Ohio Republican Party fundraiser for Bush’s re-election at his Cotswold Manor mansion. Tickets to the fundraiser cost $1000 per couple, but O’Dell’s fundraising letter urged those attending to “Donate or raise $10,000 for the Ohio Republican Party.”


Populex:
In Illinois, Populex is the company that is creating the electronic voting system for the state. It was recently revealed that Ronald Reagan's former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci now serves on the company's five-member Advisory Board. Carlucci is also the chairman emeritus of The Carlyle Group, the defense contractor often called the "Ex-President's Club" because of the high profile partners and advisors on its payroll.

Sequoia
In 1999, two Sequoia (Voting Systems) executives, Phil Foster and Pasquale Ricci, were indicted for paying
Louisiana Commissioner of Elections Jerry Fowler an $8 million bribe to buy their voting machines. Fowler, is
currently serving five years in prison.

Answer 7

I'm taping the movie right now to watch later. But in my opinion, I believe you are naive.