By Aili McConnon

Diebold: Time To Leave The Voting Booth

In an election year, name recognition counts. But Diebold is looking to go incognito this November. The North Canton (Ohio) company changed the name of its voting-machine business to Premier Election Solutions last August, and it has been shopping the unit around. “It doesn’t complement our core business in ATMs and security,” says Diebold spokesman Michael Jacobsen. And while Premier Election Solutions has a 20% to 25% share of the market for digital election systems, last year it contributed less than 2% of its parent’s $2.9 billion in revenues.
Diebold could also do without the controversy the touch-screen voting machines generate. The latest: a lawsuit filed in August by Ohio’s Secretary of State contending that Premier should pay damages for votes dropped by the machines in the March primary election. (Diebold stresses the votes were later recovered.) With no time to roll out a new system, Ohio says it will be using Premier’s technology in half of its 88 counties come November. Executives at Diebold, who have yet to find a buyer for the unit, will no doubt be praying for a glitch-free election there and in the 33 other states that use its machines.