Voting Machine Story

I wasn't satisfied by the Diebold employee's verbal assurances in response to CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian's question as to why we should trust a private company that's only willing to provide verbal assurances. Is that the best the American people deserve, when it comes to customer service? [story]

Computer science faculties have gotten adversarial responses, instead of full cooperation, and if they're not completely satisfied, I'm not either.

In fact, most of us who're serious about security recognize that open source transparency is probably the best way to go in these circumstances. For example, just because RSA is both public key and open source, doesn't mean it's crackable (i.e. insecure).

At the very least, Diebold should by now have produced feature length documentaries about the vote counting process, and distributed these free to public schools on DVD, so that teachers might answer their students with confidance regarding what happens to a vote after you push the button (check the check box or whatever).

Just saying it's "high tech" and therefore over the heads of young children, is both a cop out and a smoke screen. Given the ambient level of distrust is so high (i.e. you can't lock us all up as crazy for questioning the integrity of the process), this level of arrogance is simply unacceptable.

I got the impression from Keteyian's report that the plan is to blame early Alzheimers among seniors if for some reason the rigging fails this time through. That seems like a lame strategy and I hope Diebold gets reamed if they try it (Congress first though, as they're the ones who sold us out for cheap).

Anyway, I'm glad we have vote by mail in Oregon, plus a culture that encourages whistle-blowing.

Also, if any patriot within Diebold is aware of any funny business (and I sincerely hope there is none), then I'm sure it's only a matter of time before we get full testimony on camera -- may have it in the can already for all I know (domestic politics is not my area of chief competence, although rigging elections is not a completely unfamiliar topic for me).