Here’s your second “Elite 8″ match-up: #12 Diebold VS #36 Capital One
Here’s what some of you had to say about these two companies:
Capital One:
“Cap one is the most evil of all these companies!!Down with cap one!!”
“I’m tired of them wanting to know what’s in my wallet.”
“About six months ago, C1 gave me an unsolicited increase in my credit limit by $1k. Last month, mid-month and without warning reduced my credit limit by $500. I noticed this when I checked my account online and called them. Someone speaking broken English explained that C1 had “noticed I wasn’t using the last $500 of the credit limit they had given me”
“Capital One won’t close your account when you ask. I sent certified mail to Capital One, and my credit report shows that it was closed 2 MONTHS AFTER they received my certified letter.”
“They nickel-and-dime their account holders with fees and charges, then ruin their credit ratings with their predatory, fraudulent practices.”
“I’ve had CapitalOne for going on 10 years and never had an issue with them. They’ve always handled all my requests quickly and without an issue.”
Diebold:
“Diebold, because they still haven’t fixed their voting software, and they hate the idea of paper trails on voting machines. “
“Diebold = threat to the processes of freedom and democracy”
“I voted for Diebold, but it registered my vote for Pat Buchanan.”
“…why is Diebold even on this list. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t bought, had contact with, or used anything Diebold… Ever.”
This is a post in our Worst Company In America 2008 series. The companies nominated for this honor were chosen by you, the readers. Keep track of all the goings on at consumerist.com/tag/worst-company-in-america.
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Diebold. They help candidates steal elections and have been reticent to fix their software because the built-in flaws make them money! [www.blackboxvoting.org]
@Bladefist: I wouldn’t say that Dems are the only ones, but if it weren’t for voter fraud we might have gotten done with Nixon ten years sooner.
I heard that in NY state that there are about 350000 dead Democrat voter, and about 125000 Republicans – but in all fairness, the vast majority of voters in NY are Democrats, so I don’t think that there is some grand conspiracy for Democrats to commit voter fraud.
However, I only moved to the US three years ago, and in Canada voter fraud is treated more severely – and its not like this is a new thing there has been pretty bad voter fraud ever since the 1870′s, why don’t we give very harsh sentences to those who undermine democracy through fraud?
This consumer site is being degraded by the political banter that has exploded here. The Diebold story is not a “consumer” story if you ask me.
Battles over election fraud pre-date Diebold and will post-date Diebold. Election fraud and vote-count reliability are serious matters and hardly in the same ballpark as actual consumer-unfriendly companies like Best Buy and many of the rest of these.
@JeffDrummer: The answer to your question should be self-evident.
@JeffDrummer: Ya I was messing around, thats why I had the smiley face.
I think we should water board people for committing voter fraud.
(Note the lack of a smiley face)
I have to wonder how many folks here would be so angry with Diebold if they perceived the voting irregularities to be favoring Democratic candidates? From the comments I’ve read, it looks like folks aren’t so much concerned about undermining the democratic process as are that this sort of thing gave us George Bush (it didn’t) and that somehow The Man and Diebold are collaborating to keep voters down.
The inclusion of Diebold in this contest (and its likely victory) has nothing to do with consumer advocacy. It is purely ideological.
@Bladefist: See, I don’t think John Kerry could have won or anything, but, as a people, we should demand accountability from our system. That includes our government, and that includes the people who make our voting machines. Right now, we don’t have that.
Then again, I guess I really shouldn’t bother arguing with somebody who’s so incredibly biased for one of the parties that he actually uses that party’s logo as his avatar.
@AtomicPlayboy: If the irregularities systematically favored Democrats like they systematically favored Republicans, you’re damn right I’d still be pissed.
Why is this a “rah-rah cheerleader” game? Why should anybody be OK with this, even those whose “side” benefited? Why do the people who claim to love America most seem to have no problems at all destroying the things that it was founded on? WTF is wrong with the people of my once-great nation?
@HeartBurnKid: ooo Burn.
If I was you, I would bother, because I’m pretty objective. My screen name is bladefist, from Warcraft, but that doesn’t mean I throw axes at people.
If there was any evidence of Diebold rigging the election, I would be on your side in a heart beat. But there is not. I don’t just change my mind and agree with people who are conspiracy theorist. Come back with some facts and we’ll talk.
@HeartBurnKid: Also we have a 2-party system, that in most cases, hate each other. If there was any wrong doing going on, you’d hear about it. It would be on the front page on every journal, blog, newspaper, everything.
That is something you can trust.
The fact is we need to update our voting process and use technology. The difficult part is who does that? I’d rather Diebold then our Government. If you trust the Government more then well, anything, then I think I found your problem.
Wow, one day after the GOP-spawned Telecom Immunity thing and you’re back rah-rahing the Republicans.
You really are a slave, aren’t you?
@HeartBurnKid: They really don’t get it. They think that since they’d accept any hook, crook or crime to get their party in power, that everyone else thinks that way. Everything’s about keeping score, none of it is about real patriotism. Weird, huh?
I cross my fingers because I have never had an issue with Cap One.
@Trai_Dep: Yes, I’m aware that it’s traditional on the Internet to cast your ideological opponents as ignorant (they don’t know the truth), incompetent (they don’t understand the truth), or evil (they are engaged in covering up the truth). Sorry, but those of us (and I am one of “us”) who think Diebold is engaging in bad actions need to come up with good evidence.
@Bladefist: Look, you and I are mostly on the same side, right? Let me know what evidence you will accept and I’ll try to find it for you (if it’s reasonable).
@speedwell: Well lets be straight on the accusation.
I’m hearing they caused Bush to be elected. Any evidence showing one vote that went to Bush that shouldn’t have, will do the trick.
@Bladefist: Perfect. I’m off work in 5 minutes and I’ll see what dirt I can dig.
Anyone else want to play “Diebold vote fixing” scavenger hunt? I’m looking for evidence stronger than “Diebold machines are fixable.” It won’t do much good to show any machines were defective, either, unless you can show evidence that the machines were defective in such a way as to throw votes to Bush, and that they were made that way on purpose by Diebold.
@speedwell: Alright. I like to think I’m a reasonable man.
@Bladefist: Are you kidding? I trust the government even less than I trust Diebold.
What would I trust? How about an open-source, or at least independently-audited, system?
@speedwell: See, I don’t give a crap whether they did or not. The fact that there really is no way to tell if they did or not in the first place is enough to get my dander up.
@Bladefist: OK. This is one of many writeups on the mysterious memory card issue that happened in Volusia County, Florida, and may well have thrown the election to Bush. [www.dissidentvoice.org]
No, it’s not proof, but it is evidence. Combined with Diebold’s criminal incompetence as far as system security goes, and the pattern of its directors’ hefty contributions to the Republican party and its candidates, it’s pretty damning.
I work in IT, and part of my job is to pay attention to system security issues and to keep users from using their system permissions to compromise security. Diebold designed and built the machines in question during a time when system security theory was very well developed and pretty much every IT worker would have been aware of how sloppy Diebold’s work was. It is inexcusable. It’s precisely equivalent to a contractor building a subdivision with locks keyed the same throughout the neighborhood, installing door and window latches so they could be opened from the outside even when they were in the locked position, constructing tunnels with trapdoors into every kitchen pantry, and bugging every master bedroom.
The Republican party used to be far above this sort of thing. They used to believe that good, honest messages and good, honest voting would win the day. I’m sorry to say that hasn’t been true for a long time. I know you embrace the old, forgotten ideals of a party that has utterly repudiated its own platform. Frustrating, isn’t it.
@AtomicPlayboy: I would certainly be as upset if the voting irregularities favored Democrats as much as they favored Republicans. I would even be upset if the voting irregularities were perfectly balanced in both directions. As any accountant would tell you, two mistakes on the books that happen to cancel each other out does not mean no mistakes were made.
there I go, typing close italics for close bold again. Dammit, I’m sorry about that.
@HeartBurnKid: You’re violently agreeing with me insomuch as we both decry partisanship on the issue. I’m just pointing out that said partisanship seems to be more pronounced on the Left, with regard to this issue. My contention is that many (most?) who demonize Diebold became aware of the company when it was related to an election outcome that they did not favor, and I question the capacity of this crowd to see voting irregularities as an affront to democracy, not to Democrats.
I would love to see any people or organizations involved in any vote tampering deported, or at the very least stripped of their suffrage.
@speedwell: I’m sure that both you and HeartBurnKid are honestly non-partisan about the issue, but when I see the following comments:
“Diebold, for rigging elections for fascists. I can avoid using Capital One.”
- so it it ok if they rig elections for people you don’t think are fascists?
“And you, sir, are a right wing corporate apologist shill.”
- how does questioning the intentions of anti-Diebold commenters make this guy a “right wing” shill?
I get the impression that a.) the shady Diebold activity has been attached to the GOP (for which there is no evidence) and that b.) these folks would be a lot quieter if, say, this sort of thing came up as part of an Obama victory. I’m sure you don’t share these views, but I think you would agree that they exist, and that they will influence the WCIA outcome.
Non-partisan? Gee, I don’t know. I voted Republican in the Texas primaries, and my fiance was a delegate to the Texas Republican Convention. For Ron Paul, of course, but still Republican. That’s why I mentioned to Bladefist that I thought he might be as frustrated as I am about the party’s complete abjuration of the sensible populist, capitalist, small-government, treating-citizens-like-adults platform they at least pretended to follow, too long ago.
As far as the Diebold activity being attached to the GOP… in a political climate of plausible deniability, I think the bar of evidence is set a little bit too high. The principle of cui bono (“who profits”) is certainly key in reconstructing this circumstantial case. In researching the question for Bladefist, I came across additional information that showed that more recent voting fraud threw votes to Republican candidates for, specifically, state governorships and Senate seats, much more often than could be explained by chance. I have to admit I was shocked, and I was already pretty convinced.
Do I agree that people would be much quieter if voting fraud was used to put Obama in power? Yes. Yes, I do very much agree, and it scares the sh!t out of me because I think it is not just plausible, but inevitable.
@AtomicPlayboy: See, I get “b” from the quotes you mentioned. I’m not so sure about “a”, but then, I do have a rather distressing tendency to give people way too much rope to hang themselves sometimes.
@speedwell: Are you kidding about that Obama part? People already raise enough alarms about the stuff he didn’t do (i.e. “OMG he’s a secret Muslim!”); imagine if they had something that he actually did. You’d never keep the Hannitys and O’Reillys of the world quiet. Some people would be quieter (which is sad enough in and of itself), but there’d be just as many people who’d be louder.
Err… I get A, not B. I get a little sydlexic sometimes.
@speedwell: Ya, todays republicans aren’t conservative. That’s the problem.
I read your stuff, and it didn’t really convince me of anything. It was a good read and inspired me to read a little more on my own.
I read [www.sourcewatch.org]
And I saw that their database backend was an MS Access database. Are you f-ing kidding me? That tells me it is 100% completely PLAUSIBLE to commit voter fraud.
I’m still not convinced it actually happened, but I do now reconize how easy it could have been, and therefore, I’ll say it’s possible it could have happened. Will I say that Bush won because of voter fraud, or that voter fraud helped Bush by even 1 vote, no. I’m not there yet.
@speedwell: Also I know its really hard to find info on stuff that old, and the bloggers muck up the search results, but do you have any other sites that are more reputable? Not to say this one is lying. Just like to read some better sources.
Diebold is the only company evil enough to steam-roll a company as evil as CapitalOne.
I mean…..they circumvent democracy! If Diebold wasn’t so evil, fewer politicians who condone the evil of CapitalOne would get elected.
@Bladefist: The site I gave you reprinted an article from a newspaper from, IIRC, 2003. It did take a while for this information to come to light. I’ll look, but you may also want to Google “Volusia vote fraud Gore 2000″ or a similar search string for more information.
@speedwell: ok
@Bladefist: Another tidbit about Diebold is that they had source code with some of their encryption keys hardcoded into it. That is absolutely inexcusable as far as key management goes. Not only does that mean that all kinds of people who shouldn’t have had access to that, did have access (including anyone who could obtain a copy of the binaries on their machines), it also means that encryption keys weren’t being regularly changed, as is the best practice.
I’m glad to see you’ve come around a bit. I’m not asking you to believe they actually stole an election. I’m just saying that someone could have stolen one using those machines. And that could be anyone in any political party in the U.S.
@johnva: Ya it seems like they hired a bunch of entry level kids to do their programming.
And its likely, IF there was any voter fraud, hell, it could have been done at the lowest level.
@Bladefist: @johnva: Ya it seems like they hired a bunch of entry level kids to do their programming.
I agree. It’s not that they’re bad people, or that they allowed an election outcome to be falsified. No, no, no it’s that they’re incompetent. They designed a crappy system to execute a fundamental democratic right.
And do they say “Hey, this product sucks. But we can fix it and design an open system!”? No. They just press on to obscure the design through NDAs and lobbying lest anyone figure out how crappy it is.
Incompetence is the worst. If Diebold wins, it should be as much a commentary on the government and our elected representatives for hiring them in the first place.
@Michael Belisle: I guess my question is, how come no one from our amazing government didn’t stop this nonsense.
Because of the overwhelming number of conspiracy theorists, liberals and myrmidons that believe whatever the media wants them to believe on this site, I think I already know that Diebold is going to win this one.
@barty: Exactly.
@Bladefist: Good question. If we’re spending hundreds of millions (billions?) of taxpayer dollars on a contracts this size, why can’t “make a product that doesn’t suck” or at least “follow security best practices” be one of the requirements? Almost seems the only criteria are cost and nepotism.
@Michael Belisle: Well, of course those were probably in the RFP (assuming there was one). But the RFP is like a wish list, because “fulfilling all requirements laid out in the RFP” is not one of the requirements.
@barty: @AtomicPlayboy: Yes, because bladefist is such a liberal. Just look at his avatar.
Again, it’s not necessarily “Diebold stole the election from Kerry!” It’s “Diebold could have, hell, may have screwed up the system, whether through accident or malice, and they’re covering up their mistakes instead of fixing them.”
Diebold.