The Business of Voting Machines

[groovedaddy]

Diebold announced last week that it has sold its United States voting machine division to its main rival, Election Systems & Software.

Given Diebold’s troubling record, it is hard to lament its departure from American elections, but this sale could make a bad situation worse. Regulators should take a hard look at the anticompetitive implications. And Congress, the states and cities need to push a lot harder for fundamental reforms in the voting machine business and the way Americans vote.

Diebold has long been the company that critics of electronic voting love to hate. The company has been accused of illegally installing uncertified software and of making machines that, at least sometimes, drop votes. The company raised serious doubts about its objectivity when Diebold’s then-chief executive wrote a fund-raising letter expressing his dedication to delivering Ohio for President George W. Bush in 2004. Ohio, of course, was one of the states using Diebold voting machines.

The combination of the Election Systems & Software and Diebold American voting machine divisions raises classic antitrust concerns. Election Systems & Software, which has also been criticized for making unreliable machines, would be the nation’s largest voting machine maker by far. And states and cities, which have long complained about the low quality and high cost of the machines, would have less choice or bargaining power.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/opinion/10thu2.html?th&emc=th

[yowzayowzayowza]

1. Thx for the link.

Unfortunately they suggest fairvote.org which is pushing IRV. I don't see an author on the piece either. :shrug:

Government at all levels must do more to promote competition.

A good start would be issuing specifications for equipment that would allow mixed vendor solutions and create a market for the devices. Then, not only would no vendor dominate a jurisdiction, citizens could purchase the equipment to use to verify the elections themselves. The state should not have exclusive access to the mechanization of automation. Democratize the machines already!

[OnTheOtherHand]

2. yeah, NYT editorials aren't signed

On FairVote, the editorial says, "...Congress, the states and cities should look for ways to have governments own and manage their voting machines, as the reform group FairVote has advocated." If we're down with that, we can agree with FairVote about it without having to agree about IRV.

[Stevepol]

3. K&R!!

[OneBlueSky]

4. there's not much that corporations don't control these days . . .

they control healthcare . . . they control agriculture . . . they control energy . . . they control war and peace (mostly war) . . . and they even control the process by which we elect our representatives and our leaders . . . rather than the United States of America, we're fast becoming the United Corporations of America . . .