Diebold insider alleges company plagued by technical woes, Diebold defends

snip
“I’ve absolutely had it with the dishonesty,” the insider told RAW STORY. Blasting Wally O’Dell, the current president of Diebold, the whistleblower went on to explain behind-the-scenes tactics of the company and its officers.

“There’s a lot of pressure in the corporation to make the numbers: `We don’t tell you how to do it, but do it.’ probably the number one culprit putting pressure on people,” the source said.

snip
Previous revelations from the whistleblower have included evidence that Diebold’s upper management and top government officials knew of backdoor software in Diebold’s central tabulator before the 2004 election, but ignored urgent warnings—such as a Homeland Security alert posted on the Internet.

“This is a very dangerous precedent that needs to be stopped—that’s the corporate takeover of elections,” the source warned. “The majority of election directors don’t understand the gravity of what they’re dealing with. The bottom line is who is going to tamper with an election? A lot of people could, but they assume that no one will.”

much, much, much more...
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Diebold_insider__alleges_company_plagued_1206.html

Our biggest threat to Democracy, hands down.

is absurd in the extreme. There is NO conscionable reason why validation, opennesses, and accountability should not be built into the system. Suppose your Bank of America ATM withdrawals were "black box". The whole concept is a joke perpetuated by the parties to keep the incumbents in place.

We need ALL the help we can get!

Can you imagine how much easier a federal election would be to steal if they could count on CA? :(

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=403538&mesg_id=403538

A threat refers to an event that is about to happen. The "corporate takeover of elections" has already happened. Now it's a question of investigation and accountability. Nothing less.

Without that, investigation and accountability are nothing but shell games.

don't seem to care that our entire election system is not secure and is, in fact, in the hands of Republican corporations . . . they should have raised holy hell about the Georgia results in 2002, the Ohio and Florida results in 2004 and, more recently, the results of the Ohio referenda this year . . .

yet, as a party, Democrats remain strangely silent . . . many "leaders," in fact, refuse to even consider the possibility (probability?) that elections have been stolen from them . . . as if the notion is just too unseemly to discuss . . .

and as they continue to play the three monkey game of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, e-voting systems continue to be certified and installed in states and counties throughout the nation . . . as election officials (mostly Republican, of course) turn a deaf ear to calls for accountability, transparency, and auditability -- and to all of the evidence that something is greatly amiss in how America votes, and how our votes are counted . . .

which is why we Democrats will very likely remain the minority party in 2006, 2008, and beyond . . .

that the more time passes, the more it becomes de facto acceptance. Just like for the vote for war. Democrats have been played by the extreme right in about the same way as the nazi party played the center and the left in Germany in 1933: full-throttle organized demagogy. The options then left is to explicitly go against it, which contains the risk of being turned down in elections, or to join it, which most democrats try to do (e.g. Lieberman, Clinton). This is a strategic choice AND a moral choice. Confronting demagogy puts you, to take up a metaphor from Plato, in the position of a physician sued by candy-makers before a jury of children.

with some of the usual suspects. Ugly but true. I'm thinking in specific of my DINO, war profiteering senator Feinstein.

:)

information provided by an unnamed source, "a former Hill staffer" (Cheney's Chief of Staff I. Scooter Libby).

Not easy to be a named whistle blower these days. Clint Curtis's dog was murdered. How is Sibel Edmonds doing?

"rumor"? :eyes: It fits with what we have learned about these criminals. Raw Story has built a good reputation for vetting their sources and stories, and is a trusted outlet for Conyers, etc.

our elections are compromised, there IS no Democracy, period.
Obviously, our "leaders" in Congress aren't going to seriously address the issue (with a few notable,yet marginalized exceptions). My personal theory is that they're AFRAID to ask questions; afraid of being attacked by the GOP; afraid of losing the status quo..it matters not. They aren't going to do a damned thing about it, and we need to start taking to the streets in MASSIVE numbers to make them, force them, to understand that we aren't going to allow it anymore. Now, where's my pitchfork???

Someone else already posted this article a couple of days ago. It has only an anonymous source, which basically renders it useless. And it's Raw Story, an unreliable Matt Drudge-type source.

:bounce: