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Diebold in the Tropics: Stray Voting Machine Falls Off a Truck

Posted on August 7, 2008 by Colin Brayton

The Brazilian TSE’s voting machine simulator (requires Java)

The Última Instância (Brazil) legal news service reports:

The state elections authority of São Paulo says in a press release that a voting machine found in the street by a passerby was not one of theirs and no one knows how it ended up falling off a truck.

O TRE-SP (Tribunal Regional Eleitoral de São Paulo) emitiu nota por meio de sua assessoria para informar que a urna eletrônica (modelo 2008) encontrada dentro de uma caixa na manhã desta quinta-feira (7/8), por um pedestre na avenida Condessa Elisabeth de Robiano, 950, próximo à avenida Salim Farah Maluf, no Belém, em São Paulo, estava sendo transportada pela Diebold Procomp Indústria Eletrônica Ltda. e ainda não pertencia a Justiça Eleitoral.

… the 2008 model electronic voting machine found in a box on Thursday morning by a pedestrian on Av. Condessa Elisabeth de Robiano, near Av. Salim Farah Maluf, in the Belém neighborhood of São Paulo, was being transported by Diebold Procomp Industria Electronica Ltda and was no longer the property of the elections authority.

Segundo o tribunal, a Diebold foi contratada para confeccionar urnas eletrônicas após vencer licitação feita pelo TSE (Tribunal Superior Eleitoral).

The state elections authority (TSE-SP) said that Diebold was hired to manufacture electronic voting machines after submitting a winning bid to the federal elections authority (TSE).

They hired Diebold Procomp? Again? Really? The name is memorable for an incident in the 1980s  in involving Air Force technicians, Procomp, and phony running results broadcast over TV Globo in a failed bid to defraud the Rio de Janeiro gubernatorial elections.

People have not forgotten that. I have been meaning to read Plim Plim, P.H. Amorim’s book on the case. Recently re-released, I think.

You would think the company would change its branding, at least, the Philip Morris did, to Altria.

“A urna, encontrada no trajeto entre a Procomp e a Justiça Eleitoral, não contém programas nem qualquer dado sobre as eleições”, diz a nota..O pedestre que encontrou a urna acionou a PM (Polícia Militar) e foi encaminhado ao 81º Distrito Policial, no Belém, onde foi registrado boletim de ocorrência. O distrito averiguará por meio de investigação policial como a caixa transportada pela empresa foi encontrada no local.

“The voting machine found along the route between Procomp and the Elections Authority did not contain software or any election data,” the note said. The pedestrian who found the machine called the military police and was sent to the 81st Police Precinct in Belém to file a report. The precinct will investigate how the box being transported by Diebold Procomp came to be in that location.

This is a potentially sensitive issue because previous voting frauds have involved the “cloning” of voting machines — the preparation of unregistered machines with a predetermined result that are switched with the machines used on election en route to the tallying center.

I will have to see what the folks at Voto Seguro think of this. On whom see also

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