We can get over Capital One's problems by not using them. Boycotting Diebold, for the man on the street, is essentially boycotting voting. Diebold has the potential to f*ck the free world. Capital One only has the potential to temporarily (if you consider 7 years temporary) mess up your credit. DIEBOLD FTW (uh, L?).

You guys need to get a new company to handle your polls. Polldaddy is really sucking lately...

Waitaminute...hmm....Polldaddy == Diebold?? That certainly would explain a lot if true!

Diebold's crimes are conspiratorial at best. There have been a few problems with their voting machines, but maybe we should be blaming our stupid government for that.

Capitial One looks at my credit report and sends me offers at least a couple times per month. They invade my privacy and make me waste time shredding their crap.

I vote for Capital One

@speedwell: THIS.

@JeffDrummer: While I agree with you about capital one, to creditors, that nice credit report of yours is fair game. Sad, but true. Though there is no way I can vote for a company you can optionally go with over a company who fucks over democracy... and smiles.
@speedwell: Exactly.

@JeffDrummer: Diebold also committed massive fraud against many local governments by claiming their machines were very secure, when in fact, the opposite was true. That is an actual verified thing they did.

@JeffDrummer: Also, if you're bothered by the offers of credit, you can opt out of that, and put a stop to it. So you just need to take the initiative to do that if it bothers you.

@JeffDrummer: There's ways you can prevent people from looking at your credit report

Diebold, for rigging elections for fascists. I can avoid using Capital One.

Fine, I choose Diebold. It's not like the average voter really gives a - about voting anyway.

Diebold is the new new RIAA (who won last year.) I wish Consumerist would not put political lightning rods into this little contest. I don't really consider us being consumers of voting machines. How about changing the contest to "worst customer service" award? I have a feeling Diebold will win, but not because of any bad experiences any of us have had, but just because you are all left leaning believers of conspiracy theories.

Diebold, because if Capital One screws up, they only mess up your life, but if Diebold screws up, they mess up the entire country, at the very least.

I have 2 CapitalOne accounts. They gave me credit when I had not yet established a credit history. I have always paid my bill ontime and they have provided me with great customer service, and I have a super low rate. Thanks CapitalOne.

@SRSco: And you, sir, are a right wing corporate apologist shill. Not to mention a troll.

I don't wear a tinfoil hat so Capital One.

@SRSco: More or less, yeah.

I would like Diebold better if their software was open-source.

@TBT: Because if you're on the internet and a person disagrees with you, they live under a bridge!

@SRSco: It's not a conspiracy theory to state the fact that Diebold produced crappy, insecure voting machines, thus undermining public faith in our system of elections. It IS a conspiracy theory to say that the machines actually have been used to steal an election (however, the whole problem with electronic voting is that there is no way to prove or disprove such conspiracy theories). Diebold produces a voting product that simply should not exist.

Diebold of course, unless you don't care about democracy, then in that case move out of the US to say China.

@SRSco: I agree, but Consumerist didn't do it. The people who though John Kerry could actually win are upset and need to take out their frustrations on Diebold.

@TBT: You are a socialist. That's worse.

@linus: You have a good point

@SRSco: I agree with everything you said, aside from the "you're a liberal, therefore you're wrong" Jim Quinn b.s.

I'm not really a consumer of Diebold products voting machines, my government is. I really wish this contest was redefined as "Least consumer friendly company" or something like that.

Capitol One is a choice.

Interaction with Diebold is not.

@SRSco: Way to troll there.

@sisedi: True, though it is pretty obvious he was trolling.

@battra92: Damn, I had a response to that and forgot... See johnva's.

@johnva: Independent auditing. I mean true unsolicited independent auditing. Of course this will never happen but you get the idea.

@Greg P: Jim Quinn making an appearancer on Consumerist! Wow.

Can I change my vote for worst company to Jim Quinn?

@Papa Midnight: "True unsolicited independent auditing" wouldn't even work in all cases. If the machines are tampered with to record something other than what was actually voted in a percentage of cases, how is going back and looking at those records (made, again, by the subverted machine) going to help?

There are mechanisms for building electronic voting systems which aren't easily subverted; see Prêt à Voter, or Punchscan; secure electronic voting has been a popular topic in cryptography for a long time (indeed, it's covered in Applied Cryptography, which came out in 1996 and has since then been effectively required reading for anyone with an interest in the subject).

There's no excuse for building an unauditable, insecure electronic voting system in this day and age. I don't buy the conspiracy theories, but I think that the careless disregard for security evidenced by the independent source audits Diebold has fought against are every bit as bad.

Came for the vote, and stayed for the immature name calling I knew would happen. Wasn't disappointed either.

@Bladefist: You should be mad at Diebold even if your guy WON the election. Like I said, they have undermined faith in the fairness of our system of elections by producing and selling insecure voting machines. So they have reduced the perceived legitimacy of the Bush presidency, because people have a legitimate reason to doubt the results and call them into question. If the machines and methods used for voting were secure, there would be less of this doubt and questioning going on, which would be good for everyone.

@BlackFlag55: Explain, then, how I've never once in 9 years of voting now, had to deal with them?

Diebold doesn't give bad customer service. Diebold is not the sort of company this site is about. Other than his political ideological attack, SRSco has a point. (well, except the RIAA is far different from Diebold, IMO). I don't see how unproven allegations of election throwing trumps proven privacy invasions on the massive scale that Best Buy and Capitol One perpetrate.

Diebold, because not only their voting machines stink, but their ATMs can crash and freeze, too: [coed.org]

IIRC, aren't Diebold voting machines based on MS Windows CE? That might be one reason why they're so bad...

@Greg P: well that's not what the contest is defined as, now is it?

Diebold's two major products these days are ATMs and voting equipment. There's conclusive evidence that they made the voting machines tamper-friendly, and while I'd like to think the ATMs are safer to use... well, let's just say I'm a little pessimistic about that.

Just because you, the end user, are not that company's "consumer" doesn't make them not a steaming pile of shit.

Polls before the jump please.

@Greg P: You're paraphrasing what I said. I didn't say "you're a liberal therefore you're wrong." I said "you are all left leaning believers of conspiracy theories." The troll part of my statement was "you are all". What I meant to say was "many of you."

For the record I'm a left leaning NON believer of conspiracy theories.

And I'm not into your "least consumer friendly company" idea at all. That's where we end up voting on the RIAA, MPAA, Haliburton and Diebold. Look, we all know that most people who comment on blogs and message boards on the Internet find the aforementioned abhorrent, why can't we pick on companies that consumers actually do business with on a regular basis (Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Uhaul, Cap One, etc.)

@johnva: You word it a bit better than I do. I'm aware Diebold has made some shoddy machines. They did not, however, make them defected to the point to ensure Republicans win more elections. Give me a break.

I'm not trolling...I'm just saying.

@johnva: I haven't seen any evidence to say that the election was manipulated by even 1 vote by diebold.

I'm sure its a serious matter, and the people at diebold would go to prison for a long time for voter fraud. They would also lose their contract.

@SRSco: you are all left leaning believers of conspiracy theories.

My, what a generalization you've got there. You are here. That must mean you are also a left leaning believer of conspiracy theories too. Welcome, my fellow believer.

You are just in time to chime in on the government cover-up of aliens landing in Area 51.

What are your thoughts on the government claiming Pioneer found ice on Mars? Images were definitely photoshopped. I think it is all a big lie in an attempt to justify spending $100 billion on a manned mission to Mars.

I know you will agree that the government puts chemicals in our drinking water that hypnotizes us to "Buy American" when what we really want is Japanese.

We all know Exxon is really a secret republican government organization created to keep gas prices high so the lower classes never get a economic foothold to rise up.

Oh how I could go on and on with my conspiracy theories but government spies are watching.

@johnva: Thanks, I did opt out a few weeks ago when I saw how much Capital cared what was in my wallet ;)

@Bladefist: I have thought that too. I mean, given the fact that no political party has come forward to say that there was voter fraud, I would assume that it is minimal at best. Not acceptable - but when you think about the 500,000 dead voters in NY, I would imagine that the number of votes given by dead people and illegals pales to the errors on the Diebold machines.

@Bladefist: That's not what I said. I said that the mere fact that Diebold's voting machines are insecure reduces faith in the election. BTW, it IS fact that they are insecure, because independent experts have come to that conclusion...the mere fact that we haven't seen evidence of them being used to steal an election does not mean they are secure. And you're also missing the point that one of the whole problems with direct-recording electronic voting in the first place is that it doesn't leave tangible evidence of fraud. So it's entirely plausible that there has been undetected, and undetectable, election fraud via Diebold machines already.

@JeffDrummer: That's a big assumption. The fact that no political party has come forward to say there was voter fraud does NOT mean that fraud was minimal at best. It may just mean that there is no concrete evidence of it, and they don't want to make a claim they can't prove. The Diebold machines are specifically designed in a way that makes it nearly impossible to obtain evidence of fraud, so the absence of evidence here is not evidence that fraud did not take place.

All of Diebold's ATM's have always printed a paper receipt, yet none of their voting machines was designed to.
Diebold's boss said he was going to everything possible to make sure Bush & Republicans won the election.
Diebold's voting machines were built so that all of them used the same key to open them up, none of their ATM's was built that way.
Diebold's software for the voting machines is garbage & easily hacked & altered to allow one candidate to get votes they weren't voted for.

Capitol One can only steal our money, Diebold steals our democracy & our country.

Diebold should win this year as worst company.

It's an election year, people. Let's put our country above a couple annoying TV ads?

I had to vote for Diebold. Not only do they screw over the elections in this country, they also make many of the crappy ATMs that everyone complains about.

So they steal your votes and your money.

I'm a college kid. The dorm I lived in the past two years had generic machines to put funds in the washers/driers. The one I live in now uses a Diebold system. The generics were simple, clean and most importantly took a whole of 10seconds to operate. The Diabold machines not only fail to perform basic functions (such as adding additional dry cycles) but take almost 5 minutes to put a buck fifty into a machine form my student account.

Why in God's name would you trust a company that fails at LAUNDRY with our VOTES?!

The Onion: Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

"What's in YOUR wallet?"

"Cash."

We have Diebold to thank for W and the destruction of our country.

@JeffDrummer: Ya if history has taught us anything, it's that democrats are the ones that commit voter fraud :)

@JustaConsumer: destruction? Where do you live? I'm doing better then ever.

@johnva: I think that's bit tin foil hat. But, @Greasy Thumb Guzik: is headed in the right direction. I find it strange that Diebold can make such solid ATM's and their voting machines are crap. To add to the list:

They also refused to be subject to audit or to have their source code reviewed (even under NDA).

Many of the problems they had with the voting machines occured in Democratic heavy areas.

So when you add all these together, at the very least Diebold is fueling their own problems by not being forthright. It also raises a lot of questions about the integrity of our system. While there may not be fraud (I'm not so sure), people need to feel secure that their votes will count or causes problems like this.

Man I love the kool-aid drinking ignorance in trying to defend the Bush administration and trying to convince people that things are better now than before this disaster came to Washington. Of course there's never any facts to back it, but it just warms my cockles to see people so stunningly blind to the truth, or in such hardcore denial.

@JustaConsumer: Oh yeah, I forgot when the moment where all freedom was torn from this country and it became a 3rd world shit hole and we all decided to move to Morocco because anywhere is better than here amiright?