Fuck the Vote!

Well folks, this doesn't come as much of a surprise and intially I was skeptical that the decision by a N.C. judge to not give Diebold liability protection would do much of anything. Diebold spewed a lot of fancy rhetoric and pretended to be a good corporate citizen by being able to deny release of their voting machine code on artificial grounds. Diebold initally said that they would just not do business in N.C., which is not a crucial swing state anyway, so no big deal.

Well, it turns out that, despite state law requiring all election software be exposed to scrutiny that Diebold had refused to abide, the company has now been certified by the North Carolina Board of Elections anyway. Via Bradblog, EFF is calling this the "immaculate certification" and, as you might expect, catalyzsis for this questionable and completely unwarranted certification was performed by a one Keith Long, a man who worked for Diebold as recently as one year ago.

The bottom line here is that in North Carolina, a state with one of the strictest election transparency laws on the books, bends to the will of Diebold and its state government agents. The state has certified Diebold as a voting machine vendor, despite the company's stance that it will not render its software to state examiners, in effect breaking the law. This is what the electoral process in this country has become. If you think that I might be overstating things a tad, well, here is what North Carolina Election Board chairman, Larry Leake, had to say about the situation:

Everyone needs to cross their fingers.

Ah, yes. Now there's an electoral process we can all be proud of. Perhaps we all should just stay home, close our eyes and wish real hard for the candidate we like.

Some might have wondered if we would ever see the electoral process in the US approach the shameful levels that exist right now in Egypt, where state police stand outside polls and prevent voters from voting. The answer to that question is obvious: no. Not with Diebold at the helm. Our subversion of the electoral process is much more subtle than that. Although, given this brazen move, not that much more.