Diebold e-mail discusses price gouging Maryland

[tom bldr <tom_bldr@xxxxxxxxx>]

No kidding gang, after getting active in trying to
help head off this e-voting trainwreck, reading
everything in sight on the issue, I just want to scrap
the whole e-voting mess totally in favor of simple
paper ballots ad infinitum. 

The two most meaningful, preventable ingredients of
the FL debacle were the illegal W. Palm Beach
butterfly ballot, and the over-zealous scrubbing of
the voter rolls with no remedy for those 1000s of
voters scrubbed wrongly.  

So, we're all really really careful to never use
butterfly ballots again, and we've implemented the
"provisional ballot" as a remedy for those wrongly not
on the voter roll. Hanging/dimpled chads resulted from
voters not being dilligent enough, and chad reservoirs
which were chock full from not being cleaned out for
years. So, we legislate cleaning them out routinely,
and educate voters with a sign in the booth and/or tv
ads instructing them to check the ballot after removal
from the voting device. Voter errors like overvotes,
undervotes, & hanging chads OUGHT to be distributed
across choices fairly evenly, cancelling one another
out. Between these fairly simple remedys, the problem
is solved cheaply while maintaining reasonabe voter
confidence. But noooooo...

This whole e-voting thing introduces a bijillion new
points of failure, suspition and fraud... even if we
get our way in making them use open source sw & leave
a voter verifiable paper trail. So, we end up spending
obscene tax dollars on fancy ballot marking devices,
ultimately netting us one part reduced
voter-error-factor, five parts conspiracy theory
fodder. Bad deal. 

Well that's my little vent session. Maybe it was the
following article which set me off..  -Tom Rategan 


snip

http://www.gazette.net/200350/princegeorgescty/state/192070-1.html

Secret Diebold e-mail: They want a paper trail? Fine,
then we'll rob them blind
Posted on Thursday, December 11 @ 10:33:00 EST 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail discusses price gouging Maryland
By Steven T. Dennis, Prince George's County Gazette
ANNAPOLIS -- An e-mail found in a collection of files
stolen from Diebold Elections Systems' internal
database recommends charging Maryland "out the
yin-yang," if the state requires Diebold to add paper
printouts to the $73 million voting system it
purchased.
The e-mail from "Ken," dated Jan. 3, 2003, discusses a
(Baltimore) Sun article about a University of Maryland
study of the Diebold system:
"There is an important point that seems to be missed
by all these articles: they already bought the system.
At this point they are just closing the barn door.
Let's just hope that as a company we are smart enough
to charge out the yin if they try to change the rules
now and legislate voter receipts."
"Ken" later clarifies that he meant "out the
yin-yang," adding, "any after-sale changes should be
prohibitively expensive."
The e-mail has been cited by advocates of
voter-verified receipts, who say estimates of the cost
of adding printers -- as much as $20 million statewide
-- have been bloated.
"I find it appalling," said Del. Karen S. Montgomery
(D-Dist. 14) of Brookeville, who plans to file a bill
mandating a voter-verified paper trail.
"I'd really like to have [yin-yang] explained to me
anatomically, with the assumption that almost any
place it would be would be painful," she said.
Montgomery said that the price to add printers should
be much lower and that she thinks it is being
high-balled in part to keep people from talking about
the printing system.
Diebold spokesman David Bear would neither dispute nor
confirm the accuracy of the "yin-yang" e-mail on
Monday, saying it is "at best the internal discussion
of one individual and does not reflect the sentiments
or the position of the company."
Last week, Diebold dropped threats to sue voting
rights advocates who published the e-mail and other
reportedly stolen documents or linked to an online
archive of Diebold files from their Web sites.
According to news reports, a hacker broke into the
Ohio company's servers using an employee's ID number
and copied a 1.8-gigabyte file of company
announcements, software bulletins and internal e-mails
dating back to January 1999.
The purloined files include discussions of the
security of Diebold's voting machines, which has been
a contentious issue in Maryland and other states.
State Board of Elections Administrator Linda H. Lamone
told The Gazette last month that Diebold had given a
preliminary estimate of $1,000 to $1,200 per machine
to add printouts, or up to $20 million for the state's
more than 16,000 machines. She said last week that she
could not recall whether she got the figure from
Diebold or media reports.
Lamone, who said she had not seen the e-mail and did
not know if it was accurate, also said she believes
that a clause in the contract requiring that Diebold
give Maryland the lowest price of any state for
hardware should guard against price-gouging if the
General Assembly mandates voter receipts. But some
portions of the contract still would have to be
renegotiated, she said.
Bear said he did not know the particulars of the
contract.
The issue of voter-verified paper receipts continues
to gain momentum nationally, with California's
secretary of state announcing that all electronic
voting machines there must include paper printouts by
2006. The cost cited by one of Diebold's competitors,
according to news reports, was about $500 a machine.
Aviel D. Rubin, a Johns Hopkins University computer
scientist who wrote a report earlier this year that
found the Diebold machines to be riddled with
potential security holes, has advocated for
voter-verified receipts. Without such a check on the
machines, he said, errors or fraud could go
undetected. Rubin's report prompted Gov. Robert L.
Ehrlich Jr. (R) to ask for an independent
investigation by SAIC Corp., which affirmed that the
system was "at high risk of compromise."
Bob Urosevich, president of Diebold Elections Systems,
declined to estimate a price in an interview last
month, saying the cost would depend on a number of
factors.
Lamone also said that adding paper printouts to the
machines before the November presidential election
would be difficult, but not impossible, if the General
Assembly should mandate it. All of the equipment would
need to be retrofitted, retested and recertified, new
procedures put in place, and judges retrained, she
said.
Montgomery's bill would allow voters to correct errors
they find on a paper printout. It also would require
random checks of paper records in 2 percent of
election districts against the computer records to
ensure that there has been no tampering with the
computers. The paper records would be used as the
final arbiter in the event of a recount.
Lamone said she retains confidence in the system: "I
think they've undergone so much study now that
everyone in the world understands what their
weaknesses are and what processes need to be put into
place to make sure they are not compromised. We here
in Maryland have taken giant steps to ensure the
security of the voting system."
Lamone said local jurisdictions are excited about the
technology and conducting successful mock elections,
with a voter education effort planned for late
January.
Urosevich told The Gazette last month that the Diebold
system is secure. He also noted that the system passed
extensive independent testing at both the state and
federal levels, and said his company had already fixed
the security issues found by SAIC.
Lamone criticized
Another e-mail from the archive, sent Dec. 18, 2002,
and purported to be from Sue Page, one of Diebold's
Maryland project managers, criticizes Lamone by name.
"Linda Lamone ... makes public statements airing dirty
laundry and casting doubt. She's about power and
control. She feels powerful when she makes negative
comments. What she misses is that her negative
comments reflect negatively on her. She should be
proud of and support her initiative of a state wide
voting change, rather than casting doubt on her own
decision."
Page writes that the State Board of Elections has a
negative approach, mandating to county election
directors instead of working with them, and
threatening University of Maryland researchers rather
than building a positive relationship.
Advice on how to deal with the media fell on deaf
ears, she writes. "There's not much that we can do,
other than hope that a new Republican Governor will
effect change."
Asked about the e-mail on Thursday, Page said, "I'm
not allowed to comment." 
Lamone, a Democrat, has been battling to keep her job
amidst efforts from Ehrlich to install a Republican
elections chief. Four of the five board members would
have to vote to remove Lamone; three are Republicans
and two are Democrats.
Lamone said last week she had not seen the e-mail. "I
don't know whether they are really hers or not," she
said, but she defended the agency's actions. Lamone
said that the agency has a very positive relationship
with the University of Maryland and a collaborative
effort with the counties.
"I don't know what she's talking about," Lamone said.
"We try to be as collaborative as possible." 
Copyright © 2003 The Gazette

Article reprinted at the partisan SmirkingChimp, with
partisan reader commentary:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=14124&mode=&order=0

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