California official sues voting machine maker for $15 million

San Francisco Chronicle:

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen sued a Nebraska voting machine company on Monday, seeking fines and reimbursements of nearly $15 million from the firm for allegedly selling nearly 1,000 uncertified machines to San Francisco and four other counties.

San Francisco's 558 AutoMARK ballot-marking devices were among 972 of the machines that Election Systems & Software sold in California last year without putting them through the state testing process. [...]

"ES&S ignored the law over and over and over again, and it got caught," Bowen said in a statement after filing suit against the company. "I am not going to stand on the sidelines and watch a voting system vendor come into the state, ignore the laws and make millions of dollars from California's taxpayers in the process."

Debra Bowen is one gutsy girl. She also decertified the very machines Utah uses statewide. Only one of those machines will be allowed per precinct to be used by the handicapped. Every single one of those votes will be compared with the printout from the machine by hand.

In Utah, every voting record will be sealed immediately after the election. The results will be determined solely on the data produced on the chips inside the computer.

Shortly after Bowen announced her new policy toward the Diebold machines, they changed the name of their voting machine division to "Premiere Voting Solutions." The Utah press and television media have always avoided embarrassing Diebold and I'm sure they will continue that policy. The name change has not been reported to any degree I am aware of or even the decertification, and now Diebold will be able to carry on it's new life just as a criminal does with his new name.

Don't worry, be happy.