Prototype of first virtualized ATM: Diebold calls it 'a game changer'
Diebold, the United States' largest manufacturer of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) will be unveiling its prototype of a virtualized ATM today, the first day of the annual VMworld conference in Las Vegas.
Like most of the products coming out of VMworld this week, the virtualized ATM was developed jointly by Diebold and VMware. Unlike the traditional standalone ATM model, the virtual ATM has no onboard computer driving it, and it is effectively a thin client tied to a central management server.
Diebold finally rids itself of electronic voting business
If you ask Diebold, there is a such thing as bad press. For years, the company has endured brand-eroding criticism about its electronic voting machines, and earlier this year in a hearing, publicly admitted they had serious design flaws.
Now, the company can finally move on from its e-voting debacles, as it sold the business unit to competitor Election Systems & Software, Inc. for a mere $5 million.
Diebold admits serious design flaw in e-voting machines
Premier Election Systems -- the company formerly known as Diebold -- admitted in a public hearing on Thursday that the software used to manage audit logs on their electronic-voting systems had flaws that would not only drop certain votes entered into the system, but can delete the audit logs that could indicate a problem.
The testing, conducted after an election last June in Humboldt County, Calif., revealed at the time flaws in Diebold / Premier's GEMS system later confirmed by the California Secretary of State. The hearings now underway will help state officials to decide whether to decertify the GEMS v. 1.18.19 system for use in future state elections. The Humboldt testing revealed that the software dropped ballots under certain circumstances. Further investigation by the Secretary of State's office confirmed that problem -- and revealed that the audit logs themselves could be radically altered, sometimes with just one click. The problems with the audit logs, had they been known during the certification process (as Diebold knew for years, it was revealed today), should have disqualified the systems from being certified at all.
Four-year-old Diebold bug bites a California election
An unusual project monitoring the accuracy of electronic voting in Humboldt County, Calif. uncovered a glitch that dropped or miscounted 197 ballots in the November election. The bug has been known to the manufacturer for four years.
E-voting's troubles are widely known by now, so much so that Humboldt County registrar Carolyn Crnich consented to work with a group of election integrity experts -- banded together and calling themselves the Humboldt County Election Transparency Project (HCETP) -- to find a way to double-check the results of the June 2008 voting in her county. Humboldt uses Diebold optical-scan units running, as it turned out, version 1.18.19.0 of the firm's Gems software.
Diebold Reorganizes, Renames Its Election Systems Unit
In an attempt to distance itself from a swarm of negative publicity surrounding security integrity problems plaguing its voting machines and servers, Diebold, Inc. announced this morning it is renaming its Election Systems unit to Premier Election Solutions, and restructuring it to give its new board of directors greater independence from the parent company.
While the news from Premier this morning sounded upbeat and hopeful, that message was indeed independent from that of its parent, which glumly announced it had failed to achieve its principal goal of selling the election systems division outright.
Diebold May Exit e-Voting Business
Faced with continuing criticism that is increasingly tarnishing the 150-year old company's reputation, Diebold may be preparing to offload its electronic voting unit, say analysts quoted by the Associated Press
What to critics may appear as the company's main business, in reality is a unit that only marginally adds to Diebold's bottom line. For much of the company's history, Diebold's focus has been on providing safes and automated teller machine services.
Governor Warns of Crisis in Wake of Diebold 'Repair' Revelations
A so-called "technical refresher" which purportedly involved everyday maintenance procedures conducted on Diebold Election Systems electronic voting equipment in Maryland during the summer of 2005, included the replacement of motherboards on account of their ability to cause systems to freeze without warning, the Baltimore Sun reported yesterday.
But state voting officials were never apprised of the equipment replacement, said Giles W. Burger, chairman of the State Board of Elections, in an interview with the Sun, nor were they told that the cause of such freezes had been discovered by Diebold three years earlier.
Diebold Source Code Disks Mailed to Maryland Democrat
The Baltimore Sun is reporting that a former delegate in Maryland's state legislature, who is also both a well-known local philanthropist and critic of the state's election system, received an anonymously mailed package appearing to contain original source code diskettes used by Diebold Election Systems for machines used in that state's election in 2004.
The version of the election software on those diskettes, as well as its markings, appear to indicate that they do not contain programs used in this year's statewide elections, but instead a version used during a testing session by an independent firm in November 2003, according to the Sun.
Calif. Voices Diebold e-Voting Concerns
Often looked at with a suspicious eye from left-leaning groups for its pro-Republican executives and skewed campaign donations, and already being investigated elsewhere, Diebold was told Wednesday by the State of California that it could not certify the company's e-voting systems without further review.
This isn't the first problem for the polling machine manufacturer. Last week, Leon County, Fla. Officials dropped Diebold after it was discovered memory cards in the company's optical scan machines could be easily tampered with.
Virtual worlds firm files IP suit on Christmas Eve
Worlds.com, which launched its first 3D avatar environment back in the mid-90s, has retained an intellectual property law firm and has filed patent infringement suits. Its first, against game developer NCsoft, was filed on Christmas Eve.
The company claims that NCsoft -- the publisher of Lineage and City of Heroes -- is infringing on two patents. The latest of the two, "System and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space" (US Patent 7,181,690), was filed in August 2000 and awarded in February 2007. It describes a method for displaying other avatars and non-avatar objects (e.g., background items) to multiple users.
E-voting machines, registration databases have a mixed Tuesday
Though no reports of substantial problems have emerged, the tech behind Tuesday's election didn't necessarily cover itself in glory.
OurVoteLive.org blogged that it had received over 75,000 calls since Tuesday, though causes varied and only a minority of calls received concerned e-voting trouble -- 1,730 since yesterday. The VoterAction hotline reported 16,000 calls, with as many as 3,000 in just one hour, again with a fraction of those reflecting machine problems.
Glitch reports mount for e-voting machines
It's six days until the American elections. Do you know whether your electronic voting machines are behaving?
The overwhelming majority of voters on Tuesday will encounter machines from Premier Election Systems, Hart InterCivic, Sequoia Voting Systems, or Election Systems and Software (ES&S). For your consideration, we present a roundup of problems currently known to be manifesting or to have recently manifested in testing and early voting, sorted by vendor.
New troubles reported with iPod-like e-voting units
With just over a week left before the general election, reports are surfacing of problems with e-voting machines from manufacturers rarely mentioned in the news.
Hart InterCivic isn't the most common e-voting platform out there (that would be the Accuvote TS and TSX line, from Premier / Diebold), and the eSlate doesn't operate like touchscreen units do. Instead, it uses a dial-and-button approach that's a bit like an older iPod -- run your finger around a big dial, then click a button to make your picks.
E-voting under scrutiny as US election enters the home stretch
As polling places report record numbers of early and absentee votes cast, Fortify has released a report pinpointing where trouble with e-voting could most easily arise in 2008.
Reports from around the nation indicate that turnout for the 2008 elections is on track to set participation records. But after a series of mishaps, meltdowns, and curious coincidences in recent years, voters may not trust the gear with which they're voting.
E-voting issues stir in advance of November elections
With US elections four weeks away, visions of glitches past and present are dancing in the heads of tech observers bracing for November 4. It may not help that one judge is suppressing the results of an e-voting machines test.
A New Jersey judge has ruled that testing results from Sequoia e-voting machines used in that state are not to be released until further notice.
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