Judge Says No To Diebold; Won't Block Massachusetts E-Voting Deal

from the not-yet dept

Tue, Mar 27th 2007 7:18pm — Mike Masnick

Yesterday we wrote about Diebold's lawsuit against the state of Massachusetts, claiming that something illegal must have happened for the state to have picked a competitor's e-voting equipment. Today a judge denied Diebold's request for an immediate injunction blocking the original deal, though the trial will still go on. The judge also denied Diebold's attempt to speed up the discovery process. Also interesting is that the judge apparently denied Diebold's request to prevent the state's legal team from viewing internal Diebold memos. This story just gets better and better. So, we have an e-voting company with a long history of questionable machines and even more questionable practices when problems with its machines are pointed out. It loses a bid for a contract and then sues the state for daring to select a competitor -- while then demanding that the state's legal team not be allowed to view its own internal memos. For a company that recently said it needed to reshape the public perception of the company, the new management team isn't doing a particularly good job.

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6 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 27 Mar 2007 @ 7:40pm

It's amazing
what political connections can do for a company, isn't it?
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Jeffersonian, 27 Mar 2007 @ 9:29pm

Almost as bad
Almost as flawed as Microsoft security, these Dibold machines are total crap. Scary video pointing that our Democracy is in peril http://bunghammer.blogspot.com/2006/11/did-you-vote-today-on-diebold-machine.html
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Charles Griswold, 28 Mar 2007 @ 12:40am

Get the right programmers
If they're going to be making machines that have such a profound effect on our political system, they should get programmers that have experience with computer security. Yeah, it's pretty much a no-brainer, but Diebold seems to have missed it.
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WarOtter, 28 Mar 2007 @ 7:30am

Totally insecure but...
can it play Doom? Or maybe they should put an mp3 player in it so you can rock out to your fav tunes while voting. Or even access to myspace so you can blog about voting in REAL TIME.
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Brad, 28 Mar 2007 @ 10:49am

@Jeffersonian:

WTF does this have to do with Microsoft? Fanboy jibes should be left at the door.
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SFGary, 28 Mar 2007 @ 4:51pm

Finally a smart judge. He should also make the CEO and the lawyers stand outside the court and spank them...
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