Diebold goes where IBM wouldn't

[struggle4progress]

Computerized voting machines as problematic today as they were in 1960s

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Elections experts say IBM's past increasingly looks like Diebold's future -- bad news, paltry profit and an unforgiving elections market drag down a corporation's reputation and stock price until the choice is obvious: Cut loose the voting business.
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By 2006, Diebold executives estimate their voting subsidiary will control 48 percent of the U.S. elections market, its products touching voters at every step from registration to vote tabulation. Getting there could be an uphill battle.

In that last 11 months, Diebold lost control of its proprietary voting software and the secret that it contained the same password -- "111" -- and encryption keys that allow administrator-level access to tens of thousands of touch screens nationwide.

Since then, all four public studies of Diebold's e-voting system panned its security, worrying Maryland officials enough that they withheld almost half of one report as a state secret. In California, Diebold was found to have supplied uncertified and, in some cases never tested, software in all 17 of its then client counties.
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http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~2184748,00.html