Premier Election Solutions
At the time ES&S spun off the company due to monopoly charges its systems were in use in 1,400 jurisdictions in 33 states and serving nearly 28 million people.
ES&S President and CEO Aldo Tesi said combining the two companies would result in better products and services for customers and voters.
[5] In March 2010, the Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against ES&S, requiring it to divest voting equipment systems assets it acquired from Premier Election Solutions in order to restore competition.
[8] In August 2003, Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold, announced that he had been a top fundraiser for President George W. Bush and had sent a get-out-the-funds letter to Ohio Republicans.
"[9] Although he clarified his statement as merely a poor choice of words, critics of Diebold and/or the Republican party interpreted this as at minimum an indication of a conflict of interest, at worst implying a risk to the fair counting of ballots.
O'Dell resigned his post of chairman and chief executive of Diebold on December 12, 2005, following reports that the company was facing securities fraud litigation surrounding charges of insider trading.
"[16][17] Following the publication of this paper, the State of Maryland hired Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to perform another analysis of the Diebold voting machines.
He needed no passwords, no cryptographic keys, and no access to any other part of the voting system, including the GEMS election management server."
"[23][24] According to Rubin, the system is intentionally designed so that anyone with access can update the machine software, without a pass code or other security protocol.
Diebold spokesman David Bear played down the seriousness of the situation, asserting that "For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software.
"[26] On October 30, 2006, researchers from the University of Connecticut demonstrated new vulnerabilities in Diebold AccuVote-OS optical scan voting terminal.
[27] On September 13, 2006, Director of the Center for Information and Technology Policy[28] at Princeton University, Professor Edward Felten, and graduate students Ariel Feldman and Alex Halderman discovered severe security flaws in a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine.
The company argued that the film was factually inaccurate and urged HBO to air a disclaimer explaining that it had not verified any of the claims.
Spoonamore is "the founder and until recently the CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an information technology policy and security firm that serves Fortune 100 companies."
[50] Diebold attempted to stop the publication of these internal memos by sending cease-and-desist letters to each site hosting these documents, demanding that they be removed.
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed civil and criminal suits against the company, which were dropped when Diebold settled out of court for $2.6 million.
[51][52] On November 20, 2006, Heller made a plea agreement to pay $10,000 to Jones Day, write an apology, and receive three years probation.
[56] The Republican head of the Franklin County, Ohio Board of Elections, Matt Damschroder, said a Diebold contractor came to him and bragged of a $50,000 check he had written to Blackwell's "political interests.
