Craptastic! Diebold notifies 34 states of vote dropping problem

Company acknowledges voting machine error August 21, 2008 By STEPHEN MAJORS Associated Press Writer

A major voting machine maker has notified its customers in 34 states that a programming error discovered during testing may cause votes to be dropped when they are uploaded to a computer server from the machines' vote-holding memory cards.

In Ohio, where the glitch was discovered, it caused at least 1,000 total votes to be dropped in nine of the 44 counties that used Premier's equipment during the March presidential primary and previous elections.

....The company had previously blamed the problem solely on complications with an antivirus software. Officials in Ohio's Butler County kept testing the machines and claimed that there was a problem with the machines themselves. That was later verified by Premier's own testing, which prompted the company to send out a product advisory to all of its customers.

On August 14th, we blogged about Diebold's silly attempt to blame anti virus software for the vote dropping problem in XKCD Comic: Premier/Diebold Blames Ohio Voting Errors on Anti Virus Software 

Again, this is yet another story that proves that today's voting systems are terribly designed, insecure, and flat out can't be trusted to count our votes. 

Hats off to the heroes in this story - the officials in Butler County Ohio, who stood their ground in spite of the pressures.  Thank you from all of us.