BBV: Jake Tapper's story at ABC News

[Kelvin Mace]

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/SciTech/Voting_machines_040305-1.html

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
http://www.plan9.org
http://www.blackboxvoting.com

[Bozita]

1. I missed GMA today, but this makes up for that -- MUST READ

Thanks.

[Greyskye]

2. Excellent Article

Lots of great quotes in here, and lots of dodging around shown by both Liebold officials as well as election officials. Thanks for the link!

[Kelvin Mace]

3. Most telling

The Volusia county official who refuses to authenticate or debunk her email

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
http://www.plan9.org
http://www.blackboxvoting.com

[nostamj]

4. wow! quite an article. a few 'snips'....

No one from Diebold would talk to ABCNEWS, but one of its representatives was on hand to talk to reporters in San Diego. "Electronic voting is safe, secure and accurate," spokesman David Bear said. "There has never been an instance where a vote has ever come into question of not being tallied."
<snip>
In one memo, dated Oct. 18, 2001, Diebold engineer Ken Clark allowed that a central server was accessible to anyone, essentially, even those using a program as basic as Microsoft Access. "Right now you can open GEMS' .mdb file with MS-Access and alter its contents," he wrote. "That includes the audit log."
<snip>
In January the state of Maryland, which used 16,000 new Diebold machines Tuesday, commissioned Wertheimer and his team to try to hack into a pretend election. They were successful. "We broke into the computer at the state Board of Elections, completely changed the election, left and then erased all our trail and then got back out and we did it in under five minutes," Wertheimer told ABCNEWS.

[TacticalPeek]

5. Seems like this would be of interest to business journalists.

At the least, how not to handle PR.

As well as customer-responsive product development, company network security nightmares, etc.

[RedEagle]

6. Keep this kicked for evening and weekend crowd

Kick!

[leftchick]

7. This is great stuff!

I think I will forward this to Lou Dobbs as well.

[TacticalPeek]

8. Kick.

[RedEagle]

9. In Case Anyone Missed it

Kick!

[gristy]

10. David, that is one of the better articles on BBV I have read.

And from ABC News, no less. Seems you were slighted though when they said Bev's book was "self-published".

I'm really looking forward to the Vanity Fair article. Have you seen it?

[Kelvin Mace]

11. I think there may have been some confusion

over the edition Bev puts out for libraries, etc and our edition sold via the net. I sent a note to Jake asking for a correction (he also got Wally mixed up with another Diebold director).

I haven't seen the VF article, but it is supposed to hit the stores on the 10th.

Check out the Mother Jones commentary, even more damning.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
1237 Elon Place
High Point, NC 27263
http://www.plan9.org
http://www.blackboxvoting.com

[gristy]

12. The motherjones article is ok...

But there is something about the ABC news article that really gives it some kick. Tapper's aggressiveness comes through in paragraph after paragraph. And the article seems very fresh. He uses his own words and his own organization of the relevant points. I've read so many articles on BBV and it seems that many are just cut-and-paste jobs from existing written material.

[Kelvin Mace]

13. What I like about the MJ

commentary is that it takes on the "conspiracy" angle and in essence says that Diebold et al have only themselves to blame for the questions about their conduct.

People are perfectly justified in their suspicions because they have behaved unethically/illegally.

The ABC article is devastating for all the reasons you mention, plus showing how Diebold and election officials do NOT want to talk about the problem.

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
http://www.plan9.org

[RedEagle]

14. Back up

Kick
!