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.