Advertisement
An internal memo has just surfaced suggesting e-vote manufacturer Diebold planned to overcharge the state of Maryland and make voter printouts “prohibitively expensive.” An employee named “Ken” wrote the Jan. 3 letter suggesting the company charge Maryland “out the yin” if legislators insisted on printouts.
Referring to a University of Maryland study critical of the company’s machines, he added: “[The State of Maryland] 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.”
He goes on to say “...any after-sale changes should be prohibitively expensive.”
Diebold, whose primary business has until recently been ATMs and ticket-vending machines (all of which produce paper printouts), made headlines last week when it dropped copyright-infringement suits against Swarthmore students who had published thousands of its internal memos on the Internet.
Prominent among the leaked memos is a missive to Global Election Systems (now Diebold) — baldly stating that 16 thousand Gore votes were “disappeared” during the 2000 election. Author Lana Hires frantically asks how she should explain the problem to an auditor.
Ohio state senators Fedor, Fingerhut, Miller, Zurz, Roberts and Prentiss recently introduced SB 167, a “Voter verification bill” into the 125th General Assembly. It requires that a voting machine “purchased, rented, or otherwise acquired or used in this state to produce a voter-verified paper record that must be used in any recount or manual audit . . . .” hoping to prevent the same happening here.
Referring to a University of Maryland study critical of the company’s machines, he added: “[The State of Maryland] 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.”
He goes on to say “...any after-sale changes should be prohibitively expensive.”
Diebold, whose primary business has until recently been ATMs and ticket-vending machines (all of which produce paper printouts), made headlines last week when it dropped copyright-infringement suits against Swarthmore students who had published thousands of its internal memos on the Internet.
Prominent among the leaked memos is a missive to Global Election Systems (now Diebold) — baldly stating that 16 thousand Gore votes were “disappeared” during the 2000 election. Author Lana Hires frantically asks how she should explain the problem to an auditor.
Ohio state senators Fedor, Fingerhut, Miller, Zurz, Roberts and Prentiss recently introduced SB 167, a “Voter verification bill” into the 125th General Assembly. It requires that a voting machine “purchased, rented, or otherwise acquired or used in this state to produce a voter-verified paper record that must be used in any recount or manual audit . . . .” hoping to prevent the same happening here.