Diebold

The nation's largest provider of voting equipment will unwind its acquisition last year of its principal rival as part of an antitrust settlement with Maryland and eight other states, the Department of Justice announced. Election Systems & Software completed its purchase of Premier Election Solutions Inc., formerly Diebold Inc., six days before bids were due for the installation of a new optical scan voting system in Maryland. The acquisition limited the state to contracting with the Omaha, Neb., giant or continuing with its current system, according to the office of Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler.

The nation's largest provider of voting equipment will unwind its acquisition last year of its principal rival as part of an antitrust settlement with Maryland and eight other states, the Department of Justice announced. Election Systems & Software completed its purchase of Premier Election Solutions Inc., formerly Diebold Inc., six days before bids were due for the installation of a new optical scan voting system in Maryland. The acquisition limited the state to contracting with the Omaha, Neb., giant or continuing with its current system, according to the office of Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler.

To make sense out of all the confusing and contradictory information out there about electronic voting, it helps to be a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Paranoia, after all, can be merely reading too much into reality. Consider that at least 175,000 Maryland voters have asked for absentee ballots this year - an all-time high. In fact, their number represents about 10 percent of the votes cast in the 2002 gubernatorial election - certainly enough to turn even a relatively close contest into a cliffhanger.

We would hazard a guess that the average Maryland voter doesn't have all that high an opinion of Diebold Election Systems Inc. Oh, the company's election equipment worked just fine last November - to the surprise of many of its critics. But memories of the breakdowns that plagued the state's September primary are still pretty fresh. And because of their lack of a paper trail, the company's touch-screen voting machines may soon be scrapped anyway - at a cost of $20 million to replace them.

In episode after episode, computer scientists have demonstrated the weaknesses of Maryland's electronic voting system. And time after time, officials from the State Board of Elections and Diebold Election Systems have circled the wagons - ignoring the real issues and branding their critics as kooks. We have now learned that Diebold quietly replaced the main circuit boards in all its terminals last year because of a fatal flaw that it knew about for years. Last week, someone who doesn't like Diebold dropped a couple of disks containing old company source code at the office of a longtime critic of electronic voting.

In a glossy brochure for the voter check-in system that Diebold Election Systems debuted in Maryland last year, the state's elections chief offers glowing praise. "Our election judges just love this product, and so do I," says Linda H. Lamone, administrator for the State Board of Elections, whose color photo appears in the brochure. "We in Maryland are extremely pleased with the performance of the system during the general election." What Lamone didn't mention, however, was that the check-in machines crashed during the September primary, leading to long delays at some precincts and prompting then-Gov.

Diebold Election Systems withdrew a sales brochure yesterday featuring Maryland Elections Administrator Linda H. Lamone praising the company's equipment after the governor and watchdog groups questioned whether the endorsement violated state ethics laws. Diebold labeled the glossy, four-page brochure a "case study" of Maryland's experience with the ExpressPoll-5000 voter check-in equipment, which made its national debut in the state last year. The marketing piece was distributed to potential clients at trade shows.

As the FBI continued its review of the possible theft of the computer code used in Maryland's voting machines two years ago, Diebold and elections officials assured voters that the electronic voting system set to be used in next month's election is safe and tamperproof. But critics of the state elections board and its touch-screen machines said the anonymous package left at a former legislator's office this week was another disturbing sign that Maryland's voting system could face a security threat.

Diebold Election Systems shipped Maryland flawed electronic voting machines that were used in the 2004 election, then quietly replaced the malfunctioning components last year, documents and interviews show. Gilles W. Burger, chairman of the State Board of Elections, said this week that he and fellow members were initially told that Diebold was performing a "technical refresher" of the voting machines during July and August last year. He later learned that the refresher was really the repair of a flaw discovered by Diebold about three years earlier but not disclosed to him and other board members.

Diebold Election Systems Inc. expressed alarm and state election officials contacted the FBI yesterday after a former legislator received an anonymous package containing what appears to be the computer code that ran Maryland's polls in 2004. Cheryl C. Kagan, a longtime critic of Maryland's elections chief, says the fact that the computer disks were sent to her - along with an unsigned note criticizing the management of the state elections board - demonstrates that Maryland's voting system faces grave security threats.

Diebold Election Systems withdrew a sales brochure yesterday featuring Maryland Elections Administrator Linda H. Lamone praising the company's equipment after the governor and watchdog groups questioned whether the endorsement violated state ethics laws. Diebold labeled the glossy, four-page brochure a "case study" of Maryland's experience with the ExpressPoll-5000 voter check-in equipment, which made its national debut in the state last year. The marketing piece was distributed to potential clients at trade shows.

In a glossy brochure for the voter check-in system that Diebold Election Systems debuted in Maryland last year, the state's elections chief offers glowing praise. "Our election judges just love this product, and so do I," says Linda H. Lamone, administrator for the State Board of Elections, whose color photo appears in the brochure. "We in Maryland are extremely pleased with the performance of the system during the general election." What Lamone didn't mention, however, was that the check-in machines crashed during the September primary, leading to long delays at some precincts and prompting then-Gov.

The Maryland Senate unanimously approved a bill yesterday that would require the state to scrap its $65 million electronic-voting system and switch to new machines that have a paper record. If the bill wins final approval and is signed by the governor, voters would not use the new optical-scan equipment until the 2010 election. The measure is contingent on state funding, and the new system is projected to cost $18 million to $20 million. For Maryland officials, the move would mark the second time in five years that the state has overhauled its voter system.

With technical problems apparently solved in time for yesterday's election, Marylanders were left facing other issues in a still-imperfect voting process: outdated registration lists, construction projects - and the irresistible temptation of Thin Mints. Election workers reported a quiet day at the polls, with a solid morning turnout before light rain moved across the state in the early afternoon. Frank Thomas, 71, stood outside Thomas Johnson Elementary School in Baltimore as the rain began to fall, his hands tucked into his jacket.

To make sense out of all the confusing and contradictory information out there about electronic voting, it helps to be a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Paranoia, after all, can be merely reading too much into reality. Consider that at least 175,000 Maryland voters have asked for absentee ballots this year - an all-time high. In fact, their number represents about 10 percent of the votes cast in the 2002 gubernatorial election - certainly enough to turn even a relatively close contest into a cliffhanger.

Experts on voting say Maryland is one of the states most at risk for Election Day failures as it tries to recover from a glitch-filled primary amid one of the fiercest political seasons in decades. Maryland's problems - like those facing several other states and many counties nationwide - stem from a reliance on among the most sophisticated election systems in the country, manufactured by Diebold Election Systems Inc., one of two leading companies in the industry. Over the past five years, Diebold has become a top voting-system provider, producing touch-screen equipment that records votes electronically.

Soon after California elections officials ordered testing on that state's Diebold electronic voting machines last month, Maryland's top elections official raised questions about the state's similar system. Advocates for changes in Maryland's voting system point to the Dec. 23 letter from elections administrator Linda Lamone to Diebold's top executive - made public yesterday - as evidence that Maryland's electronic voting machines are vulnerable to hackers and prone to mistakes. They urged Lamone to decertify the entire system.

Three days after House lawmakers unanimously passed a bill to abandon Maryland's electronic-voting system in favor of paper ballots, the manufacturer of the touch-screen machines offered a plan it said would provide the confidence of a paper record at a fraction of the costs required by the proposed legislation. Diebold Election Systems said it could replace 5 percent of Maryland's electronic voting machines with models attached to a printer. Swapping out about 1,000 of Maryland's voting machines with the printer-equipped version would cost about $5 million, a fraction of the estimated $12 million to $16 million for a one-year lease of a paper-ballot system required by the House bill, company representatives said.

Diebold Election Systems shipped Maryland flawed electronic voting machines that were used in the 2004 election, then quietly replaced the malfunctioning components last year, documents and interviews show. Gilles W. Burger, chairman of the State Board of Elections, said this week that he and fellow members were initially told that Diebold was performing a "technical refresher" of the voting machines during July and August last year. He later learned that the refresher was really the repair of a flaw discovered by Diebold about three years earlier but not disclosed to him and other board members.

In episode after episode, computer scientists have demonstrated the weaknesses of Maryland's electronic voting system. And time after time, officials from the State Board of Elections and Diebold Election Systems have circled the wagons - ignoring the real issues and branding their critics as kooks. We have now learned that Diebold quietly replaced the main circuit boards in all its terminals last year because of a fatal flaw that it knew about for years. Last week, someone who doesn't like Diebold dropped a couple of disks containing old company source code at the office of a longtime critic of electronic voting.