Diebold Rep Now Runs Elections

[Warsai]

An influential employee of voting machine maker Diebold Election Systems left the company recently to take a job as elections manager for a California county.

Deborah Seiler, a sales representative for the beleaguered voting company, was hired a week ago and started Monday in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco in California's wine country. The position puts her second in command of elections in the county, under the registrar of voters.

The move raises eyebrows because Seiler played a role in a recent scandal involving Diebold and the county. As the Diebold sales rep, Seiler sold Solano County nearly 1,200 touch-screen machines that were not federally tested or state certified. When the state banned the machines because of Diebold's business practices, the county had to find a replacement for the machines and pay Diebold more than $400,000 to get out of its contract.

"This is outrageous. This is just a total runaround of the democratic process," said Douglas MacDonald, of the Community Labor Alliance, an activist group that pressured Solano County to end its contract with Diebold. "There was an open debate and discussion, and the county (supervisors) decided that Diebold is not the company, is not the philosophy, that we want behind the running of elections in Solano County. Then what happens? They go out and hire the person who was advocating that philosophy."

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,26...w=wn_tophead_2

[Bill Sikes]

There's a lot of discussion on the Bugtraq mailing list about Diebold machines
right now (http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1).

Personally, I think that a good idea would be for the banks to be involved - one
would have a "voting card" to put in an ATM, and get an appropriate screen
to make a selection from. If it can be secure enough for financial txns, then....
If electronic voting was easy, cheap, and widely available, then referendums
would be much easier.... Hmm, this is probably why it will never happen!