If RiverSoft made e-voting machines
These leaked emails from Diebold, reported widely on the web, but strangely not in the traditional media, make pretty scary reading. Diebold manufacture electronic voting apparatus (used widely in the US, including the 2000 presidential elections).
Read the excerpts to get a taster:
“Elections are not rocket science. Why is it so hard to get things right! I have never been at any other company that has been so miss [sic] managed.”
In response to a question about a presentation in El Paso County, Colorado: “For a demonstration I suggest you fake it. Progam them both so they look the same, and then just do the upload fro [sic] the AV. That is what we did in the last AT/AV demo.”
“I have become increasingly concerned about the apparent lack of concern over the practice of writing contracts to provide products and services which do not exist and then attempting to build these items on an unreasonable timetable with no written plan, little to no time for testing, and minimal resources. It also seems to be an accepted practice to exaggerate our progress and functionality to our customers and ourselves then make excuses at delivery time when these products and services do not meet expectations.”
“I feel that over the next year, if the current management team stays in place, the Global [Election Management System] working environment will continue to be a chaotic mess. Global management has and will be doing the best to keep their jobs at the expense of employees. Unrealistic goals will be placed on current employees, they will fail to achieve them. If Diebold wants to keep things the same for the time being, this will only compound an already dysfunctional company. Due to the lack of leadership, vision, and self-preserving nature of the current management, the future growth of this company will continue to stagnate until change comes.”
“[T]he bugzilla historic data recovery process is complete. Some bugs were irrecoverably lost and they will have to be re-found and re-submitted, but overall the loss was relatively minor.”
“If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.”
“I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here “looking dumb”.”
“…They need this, to prove to the media, as well as, any candidates & lawyers, that they did not view or print any Election Results before the Polls closed. However, if there is a way that we can disable the reporting functionality, that would be even better.”
The tone of a lot of the emails sounds rather familiar, and reminds me very much of the sort of correspondence that used to go round at a certain, now-defunct, software company that I used to work for. As Ben says:
“The tone of the “managers” reminds me of companies I’ve worked for. They’ve inherited a ramshackle system of desperate, last-minute hacks, and take pride in their knowledge of how to work around all the problems. Look at how any problem report is answered by a long, rambling explanation of how the system works, followed by another improvised fix.”
Doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence for the democratic process, really, now does it.