DOJ: Voting Firms Can’t Merge

[mod mom]

DOJ: Voting Firms Can’t Merge

DOJ: Voting Firms Can’t Merge
By Matthew Murray
Roll Call Staff
March 8, 2010, 5:49 p.m.

The nation’s two primary electronic voting machine manufacturers cannot merge their operations, the Justice Department announced on Monday.

According to a Justice Department statement, antitrust concerns will preclude Election Systems & Software from purchasing the rival business lines of its primary competitor, Premier Election Solutions Inc., a division of ATM-maker Diebold Inc.

“The proposed settlement will restore competition, provide a greater range of choices and create incentives to provide secure, accurate and reliable voting equipment systems now and in the future,” Justice Department antitrust official Molly Boast said on Monday.

Details of the settlement involving the two companies were released by the Justice Department on Monday. According to antitrust officials, ES&S would have controlled 70 percent of the United States’ electronic voting machine market, a niche industry that cropped up after the Help America Vote Act of 2002 forced local officials to upgrade their mechanized voting equipment.

The Justice Department complaint was filed by nine state attorneys general.


-snip

http://www.rollcall.com/news/43949-1.html

[PATRICK]

1. Keep the lipstick

on the electronic pig. Legitimizes inherently fraudulent voting apparatus and one of the single greatest mechanical threats to democracy. Maybe SCOTUS can let them merge anyway.

[Sebastian Doyle]

2. Well, I suppose that's good news.

Better news would be that neither company could exist at all any longer. Because they are both proven election thieves separately.

[mod mom]

3. This gives a sense of integrity w/in the system. If the Dems really wanted verifiable, fair

and transparent elections, we wouldn't be allowing these machines w proprietary source code.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. One problem - they are not rivals.

They are a cartel.

Keeping them separate is cosmetic, at best.

Both of them need to quit the voting business and get into something more honest - like slot machines.

[mod mom]

7. exactly, now we're right back where we started still with GOP backed corporations

controlling the vote by proprietary source code. All they need is a semi close election as to not draw too much outrage. I don't understand why Brad used all caps in his thread on this. :eyes:

[Wilms]

5. In a way it doesn't matter who owns the machines.

Mother Teresa could own them and hackers could still steal elections.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Of course, if the right people own them they don't need to be hacked.

Keeps things simple.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

6. merger merger merger and I post the articles too but

why in the sam heck do we have these companies running our elections anyway?

Whether its 70/30, etc who really owns these companies and who controls them?

I guess the American public doesn't understand or think about it, they just
trust the man behind the curtain.

Gullible.