A blogger on TechRepublic has started the quadrenniel complaint by the open source fringe that U.S. elections are won or lost because of the politics of technology. A common whipping boy is Diebold (DBD).
I personally don’t really care what kind of software is used inside U.S. voting machines but I hope people from outside the U.S do not get the impression from these conspiracy theory wackos that software — open or closed source — caused the voting problems in the U.S. in 2000 and 2004.
Just to refresh everyone’s memory:
— the problem in Fla in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 (to the extent there really was a problem in Ohio) was a turn of the century (as in 1900) technology called punched cards, not software.
— In New Mexico in 2004, the problem was allegedly a matter of ballots not being counted at all, not in their being misread by embedded software
Of course, to really buy into the Diebold conspiracy theories you have to assume one of two things happens.
— Either all the Diebold voting machines are rigged by Diebold executives in the middle of the night after the working stiff programmers go home.
— Or you have to assume that the working stiff programmers are also Republicans.
Maybe because they write closed source software, they must be, huh, Jack?
