Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Security
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

E-voting and voter registration: The vendors

Who's building the gear that's running the show?

November 1, 2006 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - The biggest vendors of e-voting machinery are also among the largest vendors of voter-registration technology. Roughly speaking, there are four significant players in the e-voting market and three in the voter-registration arena. We follow our overview of those seven companies with capsule descriptions of other companies whose technology voters may encounter around the country.

E-VOTING VENDORS: THE MAJORS
Diebold Inc.

Not the largest e-voting vendor but certainly the most controversial, Diebold has repeatedly raised hackles with its aggressive responses to computer-security professionals who have demonstrated problems with the company's hardware and software. That's leaving out entirely the ill-advised 2003 promise by Diebold CEO and Republican fund-raiser Walden O'Dell to "[help] Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." (O'Dell left Diebold in 2005 amid rumors of securities-fraud litigation and insider trading.)


eVoting 2006
The company produces the AccuVote line of direct recording electronics (DRE), DRE/VVPAT (voter-verified paper audit trail) and optical scan machines. Diebold machines have figured in two high-profile tests that discovered multiple hardware and software vulnerabilities, and they compare poorly with contemporary Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. units in independent tests undertaken in Alameda, Calif. (download PDF).

As of October, various machines from North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold were certified for use in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Massachusetts will evaluate several Diebold machines in the commonwealth's November elections.

Diebold is also involved with voter-registration database systems, having purchased Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Data Information Management Systems in 2003. The company has been criticized for its involvement in this summer's voter-registration controversy in Alabama.

Election Systems & Software Inc.
The world's largest elections company, responsible for half of the e-voting machines in the U.S. ES&S was known as American Information Systems until 1997, when the company merged with Business Records Corp. (BRC). Until 1996, its chairman was Chuck Hagel, who quit to run for and win a U.S. Senate seat for Nebraska. Omaha-based ES&S makes a variety of machines, including DRE, DRE/VVPAT and optical-scan versions. It also offers voter-registration database development services. The company produces the iVotronic line of DRE and DRE/VVPAT machines as well as optical scan units. (As part of its purchase of BRC, ES&S ended up with service responsibility for BRC's Optech optical scan machines; for antitrust-related reasons, however, new Optechs come from Sequoia.)

As of October, various machines from ES&S were certified for use in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Massachusetts will evaluate several of the company's machines in its November elections.



Jump to comments

e-voting

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER
Approximately 60 percent of data migration projects overrun time or budget, while some fail completely. Download this white paper, "Enhancing Your Chance for Successful Data Migration," to learn the critical steps you need to take to execute a data migration project with minimum cost and risk to your business.
WHITE PAPER
Read the Gartner research note to learn why the TCO of a server-based computing deployment used to deliver all applications to users is around 50% lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment.
WHITE PAPER
Economic downturns have a tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive or that are out of synch with industry trends. This IDC White Paper presents the results of an IDC survey of 330 companies in Western Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas that measures the receptiveness to Linux and takes into consideration changing views driven by the disruptive economic environment that businesses face today.

White Papers & Webcasts

Share our Strength
Download Now  

Managing Secure File Transfer to Save Time, Money and IT Resources
Learn how companies are using innovative technology to overcome these challenges and improve user productivity by offloading e-mail attachments and replacing FTP with...

Security Convergence Equals Network Security Cost Savings
Listen to IBM Internet Security Systems' take on network security convergence.

Disaster Recovery 2008: Reduced Costs and Improved Performance
How long can your Enterprise afford to be without your data? With an accelerated disaster recovery program, you never have to answer this...