Fuck Diebold

Oh, and of course, fuck the Yankees…

This from ComputerWorld makes me want to sing.

Maryland House votes to oust Diebold machines
It would replace $90M worth of e-voting machines with systems offering a paper trail

But what?

Why, “Maryland! My Maryland!” of course…

1…2…3…

The despot's heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!

Maryland House votes to oust Diebold machines
It would replace $90M worth of e-voting machines with systems offering a paper trail

News Story by Marc L. Songini

MARCH 10, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) - The state of Maryland stands poised to put its entire $90 million investment in Diebold Election Systems Inc. touch-screen e-voting systems on ice because they can’t produce paper receipts.

The state House of Delegates this week voted 137-0 to approve a bill prohibiting election officials from using AccuVote-TSx touch-screen systems in 2006 primary and general elections.

…

Hark to an exiled son's appeal,
Maryland!
My mother State! to thee I kneel,
Maryland!
For life and death, for woe and weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird they beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland! My Maryland!

…
The legislation calls for the state to lease paper-based optical-scan systems for this year's votes. State Delegate Anne Healey estimated the leasing cost at $12.5 million to $16 million for the two elections.

Healey is the vice chairwoman of the Maryland House Ways and Means Committee, which recommended the passage of the bill.

The bill was sent onto the State Senate for a vote after the House action, she said.
Healey said the effort was inspired in part by concerns raised by officials in California and Florida that the Diebold systems have inherent security problems caused by technological and procedural flaws.

“We’ve been hearing from the public for the last several years that it doesn’t have confidence in a system without a paper trail,” Healey said. “We need to provide that level of confidence going forward.”
…

Thou wilt not cower in the dust,
Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust,
Maryland!
Remember Carroll's sacred trust,
Remember Howard's warlike thrust,-
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland! My Maryland!

If the bill becomes law, the state’s Diebold systems will be placed in “abeyance” and the vendor will be required to equip them so that they provide the requisite paper trail, she said.

Healey said the law would require that the machines provide a paper trail before the 2008 elections or Diebold would risk losing its contract with the state.

The bill also requires that any leased optical-scan system be equipped to accommodate the needs of handicapped voters, to ensure compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act statutes.

Healey said she expects the Senate to vote on the bill sometime in the next few weeks, before the legislative session ends.
…

Come! 'tis the red dawn of the day,
Maryland!
Come with thy panoplied array,
Maryland!
With Ringgold's spirit for the fray,
With Watson's blood at Monterey,
With fearless Lowe and dashing May,
Maryland! My Maryland!

Maryland is following in the footsteps of several other states in expressing concern over the lack of a paper trail in the Diebold machines.
…

So let us all sing a hearty refrain...until we hit this suddenly-disorienting last stanza --

...
I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! she burns! she'll come! she'll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!

--- like an axle-racking speedbump and realize that the State Song of Maryland was written as a Confederate anthem…

...
written by James Ryder Randall in April, 1861, was adopted by the Maryland Legislature as the official state song of Maryland on April 29, 1939. The poem is sung to the traditional tune of "Lauriger Horatius" ("O, Tannenbaum"). Mr. Randall wrote the poem after he heard the news of Union troops being marched through Baltimore.

And that in the first stanza, the “patriotic gore” referred to this…

The Baltimore riot of 1861 (also called the Pratt Street Riot and the Pratt Street Massacre) was an incident that took place on April 19, 1861 in Baltimore, Maryland between Confederate sympathizers and infantrymen of the United States Army. It is regarded by historians as the first bloodshed of the American Civil War.

And we are sadly reminded that some ghosts, hatreds and loathsome theologies do not go quietly to their graves after they are exterminated. That they just can’t, once and for all, Give The Racism A Fucking Rest Already, but instead, like some nightmare version of the despot in Dryden’s poem, “Alexander's Feast; or, The Power of Music", their adherents keep trying, over and over again, to install some mutation of the Southron Theocracy of their dreams. And in their fevered fantasies of Empire…

“Sooth'd with the sound, the king grew vain;
Fought all his battles o'er again;
And thrice he routed all his foes; and thrice he slew the slain.”

They live on, carefully drizzling their disease into the clean, pink mouths of each succeeding generation, hag-riding the living and contaminate everything they touch.

And until big swaths of this beautiful land eternally disavows the filthy ideological refuse that slavery and segregation left behind and quits trying to reanimate (by any means necessary, including Diebolding democracy) the despicable legacy of White Male Privilege and Conservative Fundamentalism under the fake-nose-and-eyeglasses of God and State’s Rights , we will never be free.

And our war against ourselves will never be at an end.