Diebold's electronic voting machines screwed up in several California counties. And California is pissed.
California has banned the use of more than 14,000 electronic voting machines made by Diebold Inc. in the November election because of security and reliability concerns, Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state, announced yesterday. He also declared 28,000 other touch-screen voting machines in the state conditionally "decertified" until steps are taken to upgrade their security.
Mr. Shelley said that he was recommending that the state's attorney general look into possible civil and criminal charges against Diebold because of what he called "fraudulent actions by Diebold."
In an interview, Mr. Shelley said that "their performance, their behavior, is despicable," and that "if that's the kind of deceitful behavior they're going to engage in, they can't do business in California." . . .
At public hearings about the voting problems, Robert J. Urosevich, president of Diebold Election Systems, said in the company's defense, "We're not idiots, though we may act from time to time as not the smartest."
(The quotation in that last paragraph is, IMHO, an instant classic among corporate non-mea culpas.) The article notes that a lot of the credit for this move goes to activists who have protested loudly against Diebold's (and other companies') ineptitude and lack of accountability.