MSNBC: Voting machines repaired without telling Maryland

[Coexist]

BALTIMORE - Diebold Election Systems quietly replaced flawed components in several thousand Maryland voting machines in 2005 to fix a “screen-freeze” problem the company had discovered three years earlier, according to published reports Thursday.

State Board of Elections Chairman Gilles W. Burger said Diebold’s failure to fully inform board members of the repairs at the time raises questions about whether the company violated its state contracts.

“This demonstrates the level of contractor oversight that Diebold requires,” Burger told The (Baltimore) Sun. “On Monday, I’m going to ask our attorneys to report back to me if there was any violation of the contract and what financial remedies are available to me.”

<snip>
Mike Morrill, a spokesman for Diebold in Maryland, told The Sun the company stopped production to fix the problem, then tested every motherboard when assembly was restarted. Maryland wasn’t notified at the time, the Sun reported.

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[TechBear_Seattle]

1. Meaning they had unsupervised access to each and every voting machine

Wow, do I feel more secure about my elective franchise!

[Ezlivin]

2. Diebold responds: "We put in the fix as requested."

"All we were told was to 'fix the election' and we did what we could. We'll have to wait until after the election to see if our fix was successful."

[Vitruvius]

8. Exactly; the right word for what they did to the voting machines is "FIXED" not "repaired"

n/g

[Coexist]

9. I know - who comes to repair stuff without telling the owners?

Umm... frauds?

[LibertyLover]

3. Gosh I can't wait to go vote now since I'm sure

my vote will count now that Diebold has expertly fixed Maryland's voting machines. :sarcasm:

[sarge43]

4. And 'fixing' a problem they've know about for three years

just two weeks away from a critical election.

I don't look good in a tinfoil hat, but ....

[MissWaverly]

5. Of course they HAD to fix it

It would like pretty silly to have George Bush's name light up everytime I tried to vote for
O'Malley, they had to make a slight adjustment since 2004. That's what happened when I
tried for vote for Kerry in Baltimore, MD in 2004, oh wait, it was different in the 2006
primary, they said I voted before I got there. Oh, I am so reassured that my vote will
count, we only paid 143 million for these voting machines. We should have gotten the
blue light special at K-Mart.

[leftchick]

6. This should be a huge election law violation

at least in most states. Is it in MD?

[Hubert Flottz]

7. TRUST THE GOP...

Have they ever lied or cheated?

[madokie]

10. funny you should ask, the gop is what they measure honesty with

:sarcasm: