Diebold Demands That HBO Cancel Documentary

Frosty Piss writes "According to the Bloomberg News, Diebold Inc. is insisting that HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair. The program, 'Hacking Democracy,' is scheduled to debut Thursday, five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims that Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results. 'Hacking Democracy' is 'replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting,' says Diebold. 'We stand by the film," said a spokesman for HBO. 'We have no intention of withdrawing it from our schedule. It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing.'"

about to backfire..

[adam]

You have to figure HBO has a pretty sizable legal department, and wouldn't air a documentary that wasn't accurate (for fear of being sued). So if diebold's claims are untrue, all they are really doing are serving to help publicize the documentary before it airs. Brilliant move, haha. I know I had my DVR set to record it, but I can imagine many other /.ers did not... and now undoubtedly, some will.

Regarding Diebold's claims, although the article is a little short on facts, for instance, following this section, "According to Byrd's letter, inaccuracies in the film include the assertion that Diebold, whose election systems unit is based in Allen, Texas, tabulated more than 40 percent of the votes cast in the 2000 presidential election." ... "The letter says Diebold wasn't in the electronic voting business in 2000, when disputes over ballots in Florida delayed President Bush's victory for more than a month and raised questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines." I would like to see an actual fact that states whether their claims are true or not. For instance, maybe they weren't in electronic voting business in 2000, but that doesn't mean they didn't still tally many paper votes (the aggregate of which amounts to 40% of the votes in the election)-- or that he hasn't screwed up interpreting what the film says (since he apparently hasn't seen it). Regardless of which, I think it's probably safe to assume if HBO isn't backing down, and does air the documentary, that this is largely smokescreen on the part of Diebold to try and convince the public that HBO is just an extension of the "liberal media" lying to them.

Furthermore, the article is short on explanation, but I don't think this is just a crass comment, "It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing." ..but rather that HBO's spokesman is actually suggesting they are responding to this film, VoterGate [imdb.com], and not Hacking Democracy [imdb.com], whose UK working title is listed as "VoterGate" and whose tagline says, "Computers count America's votes in secret. 'Votergate' hacks the votes." The co-mingling of the word "Votergate" does lead to some confusion, even though the directors of each film are totally different, one is produced by "Digital Bazooka [digitalbazooka.com]" productions and the other by "Teale-Edwards [teale-edwards.com]" Productions (which produced another good, but sad HBO documentary that I would reccomend watching -- Dealing Dogs [imdb.com]). My suspicions are probably best supported by the line,"The company, which hasn't seen the film, based its complaints on material from the HBO Web site, Bear said." ..if they haven't seen the film, it's a bit difficult to suggest it is full of eggregious errors, and maybe they are commenting about 2004's VoterGate [votergatethemovie.com].

On a personal note, I am a documentarian, and no documentary can ever be completely "true" to everyone. Laymen make the mistake of thinking to shoot a documentary you just point some cameras at stuff, edit it, and voila. But there is so much more than that.. a documentary is about capturing the "truth" the documentarian sees. For (s)he to use cameras and mics to tell the story that (s)he saw. There is always some bias in this, and one important trick to being a good documentarian is divorcing yourself from this bias as much as possible.

Already discussed on the BRAD BLOG

[blckbllr]

Apparently, Diebold actually did comment on the wrong documentary and screwed up factually too. Already reported on the BRAD BLOG [bradblog.com].

research

[gninnor]

Perhaps these will be of interest http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ [princeton.edu] and a write up. http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ar s [arstechnica.com]

Re:Self-inflicted wounds........

[drDugan]

You are so twisting the story.

First off, you link to a new site which has reposted a blogger post from "Say Anything" blog - who apparently will say anything to make his point, even if it doesn't make sense. Most conclusions on his blog page are completely illogical.

The actual article to which you refer is here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/kmbc/20061102/lo_kmbc/1021 4492 [yahoo.com]
and the leadership of ARORN had nothing to do with the fraud - they immediately fired the people involved.

Now contrast this to the litany of counter examples and suspicious patterns listed here:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/wa s_the_2004_election_stolen [rollingstone.com]

Check this out wow!!

[tranceyboy]

CHeck this out wow http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2609 065&page=1 [go.com] news No wonder i like opensource, we should be able to create a comunity sponsired project in direct oposition ti diebold, s%*t we do a better job than them at least.

Re:Self-inflicted wounds........

[donwhompo]

You want actual, concrete evidence? OK. Here is a transcript of a piece that was originally broadcast in 2004 on This American Life, a syndicated public radio show out of Chicago:

http://www.pastpeak.com/archives/2004/10/jack_hitt _on_re_1.htm [pastpeak.com]

I think it's pretty damning. If you want to refute the idea that there's shady stuff going on -- and that it's largely performed by Republicans -- the burden of proof is on you. Personally, I don't see why you could put anything past Rove, Cheney, or Rumsfeld. Why would you trust those people?

-----------

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. -- Mark Twain

Gore tried to follow the law and paid for it

[Von Rex]

It wasn't Gore's intention to "game" the system by asking for the first recounts to be in those four counties in Florida. Rather, that was the legal mechanism he was supposed to follow in order to eventually trigger a state-wide recount. I think he should have taken a page from the Republican playbook and said "screw the law, we're going to win this in the court of public opinion and then make a new law". He should have loudly and immediately agitated for a full state-wide recount regardless of Florida's electoral procedures. He really opened himself up to Republican attacks by giving the appearance of wanting a selective recount.

There was, of course, one full state wide recount, the NORC recount done after the election by a consortium of media groups. That recount used six possible criteria for spoiled ballots and found that Al Gore won the state under all six scenarios. Further, the judge that would have ruled on a state wide recount said that he would have insisted that overvotes be counted, that is, votes where voters punched a chad for Gore and also filled the write-in field Gore due to ambiguous instructions. This alone would have given Gore more than enough votes to win the state and the presidency regardless of butterfly ballots and Katherine Harris's various manoeuvres.
 

Re:Self-inflicted wounds........

[Bob9113]

And no one has indicated, once, that there was anything suspect about the actual results.

"In Precinct lB of Gahanna, in Franklin County, a computerized voting machine recorded a total of 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 votes for Kerry. In that precinct, however, there are only 800 registered voters, of whom 638 showed up. Once the "glitch" had been identified, the president had to be content with 3,893 fewer votes than the computer had awarded him."

Though, admittedly, that can't really be called "suspect" so much as "horrifying."

Re:Gore tried to follow the law and paid for it

[Acer500]

I actually followed the link :P and got this:

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~gpomper/FloridaRecount .doc [rutgers.edu]

The Recount Tally. The final tally of December 2000 did not actually recount all of the state's ballots. There were the now-famous disputes over chads, hanging chads, and dimples, with different judgments among counties and counters. If these disputes had been consistently resolved and any uniform standard applied, the NORC study show, the electoral result would have been reversed, but by the thinnest of margins. If there had been a constant statewide recount, Gore would have won, but by merely one hundred votes, approximately. For example, if ballots were counted only if holes went completely through punch cards, Gore would win by 115. If even "dimples" were permitted, Gore would have won by 107.