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  1. May 5th, 2004 09:16 PM #1
    Ganthrol
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    Diebold Voting Machines

    Let me start by saying that I am a big advocate of electronic technologies. The ATM, bank cards, credit cards, online banking, online bill paying services, I just love all of this technology.

    Diebold makes a lot of ATM machines. They even make a lot of card machines for colleges where students pay for school-related things similar to a bank card.

    However, I totally distrust their "voting machines". And with the 2004 elections coming up, I've been paying a lot of attention to this issue and writing letters to local authorities.

    First, if there were to be another "close call" for an election, where is the paper trail? How can we manually recount the votes to see who won? We can't.

    Second, nothing is 100% hack proof. Sad, but reality. These systems can be hacked and the votes changed. And how would we know?

    Finally, and this is a topic I'm still researching, but my history professor said he read an article where President Bush (in office now) has stock in the Diebold company.

    Some California counties have banned these machines. Ohio was about to buy $10 million dollars worth of these machines, but will now wait to look into this issue more. And the debate is heating up on this topic in DC.
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  2. May 5th, 2004 09:27 PM #2
    Graeblyn
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    Plus, given Diebold's close relationship with the GOP, should Bush win re-election, their involvement will be a point of contention. This is somewhat touched on here:
    http://www.toostupidtobepresident.co...ngmachines.htm
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  3. May 5th, 2004 09:30 PM #3
    Aristotle
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    Any voting machine technology MUST be open source. That way millions of people can read the source and find any problems, bugs, inaccuracies, etc.

    It must also be public domain software so any company that wants to create a voting machine can do so. This will ensure that no single company can control or manipulate an election.
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  4. May 5th, 2004 11:36 PM #4
    kestra
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    agreed.
    I heard Diebold systems have Windows based software.
    Microsoft is suffering from very bad PR lately.

    Only the security of a nation's democracy is at stake here....sheesh....is a paper trail really so much to ask??
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