diebold

CRITICAL ALERT: Protect Voters and the Public Confidence in Elections Act. Take action now!
Following the low turnout Labor Commissioner runoff, some organizations are promoting "instant runoff" as a solution to these low interest runoffs.

Urgent! On Tues July 8, 10:00 AM the House Judiciary I Committee will hear an amendment in SB 1263 to allow a 3 year Instant runoff pilot. Instant runoff is a well intended reform that does not meet its promise and as written, the pilots do not follow important election laws and protections.

Despite John McCain's anti-lobbying stance, he has a slew of them working for his campaign.

Following last week's post, Voting Vendor Lacks Paper Trail, and the subsequent dust-up I have continued with the search for information about Printelect.

Yesterday I received the following communication from the Craven County Register of Deeds where Printelect is headquartered.

That assumed name was filed on 9/19/2007 in Book 2648 page 440.

Thank you Printelect for crossing the "t", and dotting the "i", providing an additional level of assurance for North Carolina voters that their votes are in good hands.
 

When Diebold declined to share proprietary software with NC elections officials in 2005, Electronic Systems and Software (ES&S), through Printelect, became the only approved vendor of election equipment in North Carolina. Printelect is a North Carolina company with offices in New Bern and printing operations in Fayetteville. Printelect is the authorized dealer for ES&S in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia and the only ES&S certified printing vendor in these states. Printelect specializes in printed optical scan ballots which it supplies nationwide as well as providing other election related products.

Printelect is presented on company websites as "Printelect, Inc.," and as the "Owen G. Dunn Company" doing business as "Printelect". The NC Secretary of State's Office has no record of a corporate filing for "Printelect, Inc.," either as a new company, name change or merger. The last Annual Report filed by the Owen G. Dunn Company was for the fiscal year ending 12/31/2004. The company also operates "Dunn's Office Solutions" in New Bern.

Searches of the records of the Registers of Deeds in Cumberland County, Craven County and Wake County do not indicate the filing of any Assumed Name Forms for an entity named Printelect. The only related filing was in 1998 in Cumberland County for the "Owen G. Dunn Company" DBA "Fayetteville Printing and Office Supply Company".

Early voting started in North Carolina this past week and my wife and I wanted to take advantage of it. I am glad we did.

From what I understand from the BOE workers, local BOE databases were swapped over to a single state-wide database in Raleigh this past spring. That kind of database merger sweeps in all the problems you can possibly imagine. I was listed as inactive, even though they have me voting every two years since, like, forever. And my wife's data was also wonky - they still had her maiden name, we have been married for 13 years. The main problem stemmed, I think, from the 'geoloc' database. Our residence is on Brookstone Court - least that is what the street sign says. Nothing could be changed with our registration until we figured out Raleigh thought we lived on Brookstone DRIVE. Just that basic error locked up everything.

First it was Forsyth, now it is Vance. Two county election boards have turned down Diebold. Vance's concerns seem to be more with the lawsuits filed against the company for securities fraud and other litigation. From the Daily Dispatch (link):

Vance County's Board of Elections unanimously recommended the purchase Thursday of an optical-scan voting system from Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb.

That was partly because North Carolina elections officials eventually narrowed down the possible choices to four systems from two companies: ES&S and Diebold Election Systems of North Canton, Ohio. Each company offers an optical-scan and a direct-recording-electronic system that is certified by the state Board of Elections. (A third potential vendor, Sequoia, was denied permission this week to sell equipment in North Carolina, The News & Observer reported Thursday.)

Apparently, Diebold can muscle through the State Board of Elections despite not following North Carolina law, but Forsyth County is able to stand up to them. Citing citizen concern over the accuracy of touch-screen voting, the Board chose an optical scan machine instead, which has a paper trail, less vulnerable to being hacked, and costs half as much incidently. The company anticipating the contract, Diebold. From the Winston-Salem Journal:

The Forsyth County Board of Elections decided yesterday to recommend that county commissioners buy voting machines that scan paper ballots instead of buying touch-screen machines that record votes electronically.

The board did recommend buying some electronic touch-screen machines but only for use at handicapped-accessible voting stations.