Bev Harris on the Perils to Democracy by Electronic Voting

BUZZFLASH: Explain the implications of Diebold withdrawing its lawsuit and how this impacts you?

BEV HARRIS: First, the impact of Diebold's abusive use of copyright law did very serious damage to my organization and me. This triggered a shutdown of BlackBoxVoting.org, which lasted 30 days and derailed activism to monitor the California Recall Election, stripping away our activism base as it muted my voice on the issue. It nearly decapitated blackboxvoting.org.

Diebold's withdrawal from the lawsuit was good; now Diebold should consider withdrawing from the elections industry. Even in baseball, you only get three strikes. At what point do we say to this company, "Sorry, I just can't trust you anymore."

Now, as for the impact of their withdrawal from the lawsuit on me and what I will do next, let me explain.

I was sent the Diebold memos by a leaker on September 5, during the middle of the night. On September 6, I delved into them and didn't come up for air until two days later. During that time, I read 7,000 memos and made 300 pages of notes divided into five categories. The impact of Diebold's withdrawal from the lawsuit is that I have arranged to make this body of work public. Until now, aside from placing a copy in the hands of someone who could disseminate the work were I to become unavailable, I have done nothing with them.

If the Diebold FTP files are in some ways similar to the Pentagon Papers, the memos are analogous to the Watergate Tapes. And whether or not issue is "as big as Watergate" -- it is actually more important than Watergate.
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No Confidence Vote:
Why the Current Touch Screen Voting Fiasco Was Pretty Much Inevitable

Now here's the really interesting part. Forgetting for a moment Diebold's voting machines, let's look at the other equipment they make. Diebold makes a lot of ATM machines. They make machines that sell tickets for trains and subways. They make store checkout scanners, including self-service scanners. They make machines that allow access to buildings for people with magnetic cards. They make machines that use magnetic cards for payment in closed systems like university dining rooms. All of these are machines that involve data input that results in a transaction, just like a voting machine. But unlike a voting machine, every one of these other kinds of Diebold machines -- EVERY ONE -- creates a paper trail and can be audited. Would Citibank have it any other way? Would Home Depot? Would the CIA? Of course not. These machines affect the livelihood of their owners. If they can't be audited they can't be trusted. If they can't be trusted they won't be used.

Now back to those voting machines. If EVERY OTHER kind of machine you make includes an auditable paper trail, wouldn't it seem logical to include such a capability in the voting machines, too? Given that what you are doing is adapting existing technology to a new purpose, wouldn't it be logical to carry over to voting machines this capability that is so important in every other kind of transaction device?

This confuses me. I'd love to know who said to leave the feature out and why?
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  thanks to BuzzFlash