If you get HDNet what Dan Rather Reports this week. If not you get watch here. And I don't think Diebold was mentioned once. When this show is good it puts to shame most every other US news show. The ability to see a full hour to a topic is so wonderfully refreshing.
Rather reports on touch screen voting machines and how large numbers of them have demonstrated problems with the digitizers falling out of alignment. I can completely believe this as the Palm Pilot had to solve this by making a "digitizer" tool available in the preferences. What surprises me is why the interface is designed so poorly so that it's such a big deal. The checkbox you need to select is so small you need to be precise, but there is all this empty space that would allow a larger box and avoid most of the problem. The machines are manufactured in the Philippines and a worker said (from shadows) that quality was unimportant to management, they just had to meet their quantity goals on time.
He also spends time with former workers from Sequoia, the company that made the punch ballots used in the 2000 Florida election. The company had a zero defect policy until 1999. These people, most of whom were with the company for decades, said that management stopped caring about quality and they used inferior paper that caused hanging chads and other problems. The company wouldn't respond, but the show used their qualitiy tests on actual blank Florida ballots from that year and it seemed to confirm all that they said.
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