Diebold Election Systems

Diebold Election Systems (ref. parent Diebold Inc.) is a provider of "direct recording electronic (DRE) voting solutions" [1], or voting machines.

It is the focus of mild controversy surrounding the U.S. presidential election, 2000 and U.S. midterm election, 2002, and of a growing controversy surrounding its role in the U.S. presidential election, 2004. See Cuyahoga County, OH, US and Franklin County, OH, US and summaries of OH, US and FL, US for ongoing details and updates of the most controversial and central questions that might actually affect results, and Diebold Election Systems electoral fraud, 2004 for a full overview of the issues with Diebold Accuvote machines in that election in particular.

origins

Bob Urosevich, the first CEO of Diebold Election Systems was also the founder of ES&S, a competing voting machine company now owned by the McCarthy Group. Together these two companies are responsible for tallying around 80% of votes cast in the United States. The current vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

It is reputed that the software architecture common to both is a creation of Mr Urosevich's company I-Mark and is easily compromised, in part due to its reliance on Microsoft Access databases; and that the I-Mark and Microsoft software each represent a single point of failure of vote counting process, from which 80% of votes can be compromised via the exploit of a single line of code in either subsystem. This makes the temptation for electoral fraud profound and probably irresistible:

issues

no paper trail

Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters. This means that any such fraud would be impossible to catch.

This is not a technical issue, it is a deliberate design decision to make a recount impossible. There exist methods to generate at least post-facto vote-by-vote paper trails though this may compromise ballot privacy in a recount situation. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail. -[http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950 ]

For evidence of opportunity and evidence of method that the Diebold systems have been exploited to rig American elections in the recent past, see an expose of these systems (free online version) at Black Box Voting by Bev Harris. Also see transcript of September 19, 2003, interview by Alex Jones with Bev Harris.

partisan executives

Diebold's officials are also quite notable Republican Party figures:

Walden O'Dell or 'Wally" O'Dell, the current chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." He was very active and visible as a Bush supporter:

"Wally O'Dell, CEO of Diebold Inc., this week [27 August 2003] sent out letters to central Ohio Republicans asking them to raise $10,000 in donations in time for a Sept. 26 Ohio Republican Party event at his home. ... [State of Ohio]House Minority Leader Chris Redfern, D-Catawba Island, and Senate Minority Leader Greg DiDonato, D-New Philadelphia, on Tuesday petitioned Secretary of State Ken Blackwell to drop O'Dell's company from the list of potential suppliers [of new electronic voting machines], saying his presence could undermine Ohio's entire election system." [2]

Note: According to the AP (August 29, 2003), the letter was actually dated 14 August 2003, more than two weeks prior to news stories about it. This is supported by an August 28, 2003 Cleveland Plain Dealer news story.

libel chill

On October 10, 2003, electronic voting company Diebold, Inc., sent a cease-and-desist letter to the nonprofit Online Policy Group (OPG) ISP demanding that OPG remove a page of links published on an Independent Media Center (IndyMedia) website located on a computer server hosted by OPG.

Diebold sent out dozens of similar notices to ISPs hosting IndyMedia and other websites linking to or publishing copies of Diebold internal memos. OPG is the only ISP so far to resist the takedown demand from Diebold.[3]

On October 16, 2003, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced that it will defend the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and news website publisher against claims of indirect copyright infringement from the electronic voting machines' manufacturer. [ibid]

On October 21, 2003, Defending the right of a fair, democratic election, Why War? and the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons (SCDC) announced that they are rejecting Diebold Elections Systems' cease and desist orders and are initiating a legal electronic civil disobedience campaign that will ensure permanent public access to the controversial leaked memos. Thus, through active, legal electronic civil disobedience, Why War? and SCDC will bring to light the usually silent acts of suppression and censorship. The result will be a permanent and public mirror of the memos: documents whose public existence challenges the assumed presence of democracy in America. [4]

On October 22, 2003, the two groups have decided to pursue different courses of action, confident that the actions of both groups will independently result in continued access to Diebold's memos. SCDC has decided to comply with any cease and desist requests and subsequently take legal action against Diebold[5]. Why War?, on the other hand, will continue to provide access to the memos by listing mirrors provided by individuals worldwide. [6]

The reason for Diebold's concern is obvious. They are being accused of high treason in the form of facilitating widespread electoral fraud:

electoral fraud

On October 13, 2003, it is reported that a former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machines before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials. If the charges are true, Diebold could be in violation of federal and state election-certification rules.[7]

As of November 11, 2004, there were many issues raised re: the U.S. presidential election, 2004 which have yet to be resolved.[8] Please see the Diebold Election Systems electoral fraud, 2004 article for more details on these issues, which because of their fast-breaking nature should not be mixed up with these longer-term, independently verified, problems and issues above.

SourceWatch Resources

• E-Voting: Digital Democracy or a Cash Cow for Consultants?
• Selling electronic voting
• A Short but Tragic History of E-voting Public Relations
• e-voting
• e-voting PR
• Voting machine
• Bush's Rangers
• David Bear
• Public Strategies, Inc.

Other Wikis

• http://papertrailpatriots.org
• Wikipedia's Diebold article

External links

• Insider Memos - The Smoking Guns of "Black Box Voting" Election Fraud Dangers. Several years' worth of memos hosted on five non-U.S. servers. Most links are working (12/02/03).
• David L. Dill's verifiedvoting.org web site:

• "In response to the 2000 Florida debacle, Congress passed a law, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which mandates voting process reform in all the states."
• "Mr. Darryl R. Wold, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) believes that HAVA requires a voter-verifiable paper trail."

• Jon S. Corzine, Outrageous: CEO lobbies for Bush while seeking contract to sell voting machines, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, no date. Includes online petition to Diebold: "Republicans must stop trying to steal elections. Sign our petition and send them a message today."

Bev Harris

• Free Online Version): Black Box Voting.
• Bev Harris, "Senate Ethics Director resigns; Senator Chuck Hagel admits owning voting machine company McCarthy Group", scoop.co.nz, January 31, 2003.
• Bev Harris, Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program, Scoop.co.nz, July 8, 2003. Introduction; Part 1: Can the votes be changed?; Part 2: Can the password be by-passed?; Part 3: Can the audit log be altered?.
• Bev Harris, Bald-Faced Lies About Black Box Voting Machines and The Truth About the Rob-Georgia File, July 10, 2003.

Other Links

• C.D. Sludge, Sludge Report #154 - Bigger Than Watergate!, scoop.co.nz, July 8, 2003. Another copy re Bev Harris's investigative report at TruthOut.org.
• Julie Carr Smyth, Voting Machine Controversy, Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 28, 2003: "The head (Walden O'Dell) of a company (Diebold Inc.) vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is 'committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.'"
• Diebold appears to have conflict. CEO lobbies for Bush while seeking contract to sell voting machines, AP, August 29, 2003.
• Opinion: Taking sides at Diebold, Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 1, 2003.
• Lynn Landes, How We Lost The Vote - How To Get It Back, ecotalk.org, September 7, 2003.
• Julie Carr Smith, Diebold Executive to Keep Lower Profile, Cleveland Plain Dealer from diebold.com, September 16, 2003.
• Chuck Richardson, The not so good part of the Cali recall delay, niagarabuzz.com, September 16, 2003: "The coup de grace, however, is Walden O'Dell, Diebold's chief executive officer, who's classified as one of Bush's "Pioneers and Rangers," a tag reserved for campaign contributors who give more than $100,000 to the Bush campaign."
• Diebold Redux, whitehouseforsale.org, September 17, 2003.
• Andrew Donoghue, Michael Moore attacks e-voting, zdnet.co.uk, November 10, 2003.
• Michael Hardy, Bias in the voting box?, fcw.com, November 10, 2003.
• Faun Otter, Diebold - the face of modern ballot tampering, scoop.co.nz, November 14, 2003.
• Paul Festa, Diebold retreats; lawmaker demands inquiry, cnetnews.com, December 1, 2003.
• Paul Krugman, Hack the Vote, New York Times Op-Ed, December 2, 2003.
• Diebold (e-voting company) must now deal with the students they tried to silence and a Congressional investigation, punkvoter.com, December 7, 2003.
• Julie Carr Smyth, "Voting Machine Controversy", Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 28, 2003.
• Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, "Diebold's Political Machine", Mother Jones, March 5, 2004.