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Diebold Finally Dumps E-Voting Division... But Sells It To Equally Problematic ES&S
from the that-makes-it-better? dept
Ah, Diebold. One of the "big three" e-voting providers out there, its name was the first one that got associated with the problems of e-voting machines, despite problems being found across the board in players in that space. I could never understand why the company continued to fight and deny problems with its machines after so much evidence was presented against them. The smart move would have been to admit that the machines had problems, work with security experts to solve them, and come out with better, safer machines. But that's not what happened. Instead, it stonewalled, denied problems, mocked those who exposed security flaws and kept pushing out questionable machines. Eventually, the stories got so bad, that Diebold realized it was having a seriously negative impact on its other lines of business (including ATMs), so it renamed the e-voting division "Premier Election Solutions" (as if people would forget) and went about trying to sell the thing off -- though, for years it couldn't find any takers.
It took a while, but Diebold has finally found a buyer. ES&S has purchased Diebold's e-voting business for a mere $5 million plus some outstanding revenue. In classic Diebold fashion, the company has announced that it "would not be answering questions about the sale" -- because that's how you go about rebuilding trust.
Meanwhile, it's not like ES&S is any better. It, too, has had massive problems with its e-voting machines, while the company has a history of stonewalling attempts by gov't officials to review their code. Oh, and there's this: company memos showed that the company knew about some of the problems with its voting machines that were used in elections. And the most fun of all? When we questioned why e-voting companies didn't allow independent security researchers to examine machines, an ES&S employee showed up in our comments to call us all idiots.
Now, with the combined ES&S/Diebold/Premier, a ridiculous large percentage of the country's e-voting machines now belong to one company, with an amazingly long family tree of faulty machines and a history of attacking anyone who points out those flaws.
