7
2004
This week's eWeek column is about Diebold, the company that makes – by Slashdot's lights – the worst-ever voting machines ever made. It goes without saying that it using Microsoft's operating system. And yes, let's just get it out of our systems: Clearly when Diebold went up against the code Geeks it didn't really know what it was letting itself in for, did it?
Writing this column was a good excuse to take a look at all the hollering about Diebold's machines. And, once again, there is nothing – almost nothing – that can top Geek indignation at bad software and the determination to drive lousy engineering off the face of the planet by ridicule, white-paper critique or open hostility. It's almost worked with Diebold.
But, as Kim Alexander notes, elections have always been rife with cheating. Just 'cause a new group – a new group that's tech savvy and pissed off beyond belief by Florida's ballot nonsense -- is getting that not particularly surprising fact, doesn't mean their solutions are, in fact, the right ones. Much of the Deibold debate on the software side is – and will remain – theoretical. Yeah, you can hack the machines. You can hack any machine, you got enough time and money.