(Diebold Election Systems changed its name to Premier Election Solutions, Inc).
Last week, the Ohio secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, released a review of electronic voting systems there that found critical security flaws in systems by Hart and Election Systems & Software, as well as another company, Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.
When election officials in Ohio's Butler County first spotted the problem, Premier Election Solutions — a unit of Diebold — suggested that antivirus software on the voting machines or human error was at fault.
Ms. Inch, a 33-year-old founder of Premier Water Solutions in Somerset, said her business was doing well and that she would like to expand by hiring her first employee.
"There are some promising signs, but the jury is still very much out in Ohio, where they are involving in the review elections officials, folks with extensive election experience," said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, of Allen, Tex., whose touch-screen and optical scan machines are used in 48 of the 88 counties in Ohio.
The machines will be used in the November election, but the company, Premier Election Solutions Inc., and state election officials said there were multiple layers of security in place, including post-election audits that match voting machine totals with a paper trail, to ensure that no votes are missed.
Today Randall Munroe's webcomic XKCD features an amusing clip mocking Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold Election Systems, for installing anti-virus software on their voting machines.
Diebold Election Systems, recently renamed as Premier Election Solutions, unsuccessfully issued legal threats to dozens of individuals in 2003 for publicizing security problems found in their voting machines.
For those unfamiliar with the subject matter, the comic suggests that there should be absolutely no need for security software on such devices, and if there is then Premier Election Solutions has made some extremely poor design choices.
As early as 2002, researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice University analyzed the source code of the widely used Diebold voting machines, which have since been rebranded as Premier Election Solutions.
