Why I Love Diebold

One of the challenges of blogging is finding things to write about. If you want to keep a loyal audience, you have to write regularly; and sometimes it’s hard to come up with several topics a week. Happily, whenever the well is about to run dry, I can always count on Diebold to fail a test or do something ridiculous. Thanks, guys!

The Diebold travesty du jour comes from Elise Ackerman’s story in today’s San Jose Mercury-News. The story recounts Diebold’s response, in California, to the recent Raba report, which demonstrated that Diebold e-voting systems were prone to several serious security attacks.

The story quotes Diebold’s spokesman:

Diebold representative David Bear said Thursday that the integrity of next month’s election was not at risk. “I think it’s important to reflect that the Maryland Department of Legislative Services concluded based on the Raba report that the election could be held successfully without any changes to the Diebold software,” he said. “They went on to say the software accurately counts votes cast.”

Here’s the opinion of authors of the Raba report, according to the New York Times:

Authors of the [Raba] report