Diebold Threatens Wary Voting Clerk

An anonymous reader writes "From the Salt Lake Tribune: a wary county clerk called in BlackBoxVoting.org to test the integrity of Diebold voting fraud machines, part of a recent $27 million statewide purchase (to make sure that only the "Right" candidates win). Diebold goon says machines are now jinxed and it may cost up to $40,000 to fly in a company witch-doctor to make sure there were no warranty violations. Since EVERY SINGLE VOTER who uses these machines is a potential hacker looking to alter election results, why is Diebold so concerned? "

Why are they concerned?

[Tackhead]

> Since EVERY SINGLE VOTER who uses these machines is a potential hacker looking to alter election results, why is Diebold so concerned?

Because if every single voter gets to hack the election results, then it's be a fair election. Duh!

January 20, 2009: President Stallman took the oath of office today, after the GNU/ESR ticket (GNU's Not United-states!) narrowly beat the Gates/Ballmer team campaign in an election that stunned the ruling Demopublican coalition...

Suddenly I don't feel bad my stories are rejected

[loggia]

I guess I forgot to run them through Babelfish a few times?

Re:Huh?

[eln]

I think need to editorialize in the form of a righteously indignant rant overtook the poster and short-circuited his brain.

Next time, maybe he should try just pasting the first paragraph of the article like everyone else does.

Re:Huh?

[JordanL]

No, it isn't just you... the guy sounded like he was the Dukakis campaign manager.

In other news

[revery]

In other news, Diebold President Dewey Cheatum stated that $40,000 to "reload the voting pattern" was perfectly reasonable. "It's why it's called 'buying elections'," he said to a group of startled reporters, "if it was free, anybody could do it." When asked whether Diebold would consider printing receipts for each vote so that there would be some sort of paper trail Mr. Cheatum replied, "Heck, why we don't just go one step further: skip the whole going out to the polls, and we'll just mail people a notice telling them who they voted for." At this point in the interview, Mr Cheatum began responding to all questions with vigorous wedgies and obscene gestures.

What the hell Taco?!?!

[sgant]

Are you even suppose to be submitting stories? Where's Zonk? Is Zonk on the phone? Get him in here....

I just picture Taco in a bathrobe and slippers shuffling into "Slashdot Central" when Zonk and the others are out of the room and sitting down and submitting articles until they come back in, slap his hand and lead him back to his room to up his medications.

Put down the submit key! PUT IT DOWN!

Re:Huh?

[jdeluise]

The editors are just trying to get us to actually RTFA. Did it work for you?

Re:At least you're not showing an bias.

[ErikZ]

...but the moment someone pokes fun at your precious business establishment then you go drier than a dead crab's reproductive canal.

Is...that dry?

I mean, don't crabs live underwater? I suppose, technically, dead crabs don't live underwater. But they do sit there, you know, underwater.

Which is wet.

Re:At least you're not showing an bias.

[tillerman35]

I think he means after they're dead. Maybe he should have added "that's not in the water after it dies" or "in a really really dry place." I agree, though. Just after it dies the reproductive tract is probably still sort of wet, from sitting in the water all the time. Or at least part of the time. I had a hermit crab once. Actually, my kid had a hermit crab. But I bought it. In fact, I bought it several times. Every time one would die, I'd go buy another one and tell him that his crab had "changed shells." Which in retrospect was an excellent chance to find out whether or not a dead crab's reproductive tract is really dry. But alas, opportunity, like a dead hermit crab, and curiously enough unlike the postman never knocks twice. Although the postman doesn't actually knock. He rings. Twice, actually. Unless you don't have a doorbell, in which case I suppose he might knock. And by knock, you have to consider that when knocking on a door you really knock more than once per "knocking event." Take "Shave-and-a-haircut...two-bits." That's seven knocks, but you're really only asking for entry once, right? So if the door didn't have a doorbell, per se, and the postman did shave-and-a-etc twice, that would be fourteen distinct knocks or seven opportunities if you count it that way. Either way, it's more knocks than you can shake a dead crab at, as I always say.

Re:what does it matter?

[tetranz]

The US and UK are very different places.

Just look at one of today's headlines on CNN [cnn.com]

As I write this, there is a video item on the front page titled:

"Electrified fanny packs shock unruly students"

I'd be surprised to see that on the BBC. :-)

how can he possibly win?

[Dareth]

how can he possibly win?

That just depends on how good of a coder he is and how well he hid his backdoors now doesn't it?

Unless he spent all his time just rigging it once, not to be able to do it when he wanted. Maybe he put some cool eastereggs in and in 2008 Fidel Castro will win in Florida!

It's NEVADA!

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

The $40k is for the booze and the hookers. The techs will have to gamble with their own money, though.

Re:Huh?

[91degrees]

No. It's written in a peculiar dialect. Let me translate.

Diebold has sold voting machines to Utah. Diebold is evil. They want to bully a poor innocent election clerk. Anything they do is eeeevil and their only aim in life is to subjugate democracy so that the evil Republicans win. They want to take away our democracy!!!11!!! The CIA is SPYING on us. And the president is a LIZARD!! A LIZZZARD I tell YoU. HE's frOm anOTHeR diMesSsniOPn and Thjhey're TAking away My Brain.

Hope that clears it up for you.

Re:The system is ingenious

[91degrees]

No. You're confusing ballads with ballets. I've never seen anyone dance ballet to a ballad, but I'm sure it s an artisitic delight.

ignore me

[Anonymous Coward]

The original comment was:

"First what they do is print confusing ballads in florida to turn people against paper ballets ..."

See, the ballads were printed in a confusing way so that the orchestra members have to keep skipping around between measures when reading the score.

The odd arrangement caused a huge amount of disconnect between the members and the result was cacophony. The audience had expected to see a "paper" ballet performance - a type of puppet stage show. Due to the noted factors, this emerging artform was met with harsh critical scorn.

Oh yeah, and all this happened in ... you guessed it: where's that Fark.com tag?

Re:What the hell Taco?!?!

[Senzei]

I just picture Taco in a bathrobe and slippers shuffling into "Slashdot Central" when Zonk and the others are out of the room and sitting down and submitting articles until they come back in, slap his hand and lead him back to his room to up his medications.

I think you misspelled world of warcraft.