St. Louis is going with Diebold Election Systems
By Jo Mannies    St. Louis POST-DISPATCH
12/19/2005

The St. Louis Election Board has chosen Diebold Election Systems to provide a new hybrid voting system for the city. Officials said they were impressed by the firm's operations and equipment.

The decision expands Diebold's urban presence in Missouri. The firm recently was awarded voting-system contracts in St. Charles County and Kansas City and already has voting machines in place in Jefferson County.

Diebold also is among the finalists in St. Louis County, the state's largest voting jurisdiction, which expects to announce its decision this week.

Election Board chairman Ed Martin said the three-person panel of two Republicans and one Democrat voted unanimously during a closed session Monday.
The city expects to spend about $2.2 million, the amount it's receiving in federal aid, for a hybrid system of optical-scan and touchscreen devices. With optical scan, voters use a special paper ballot that is fed into a scanner that reads the votes; touch-screens are similar to bank automatic-teller machines.

Martin said the new voting machines will be used in the next citywide election in April and in any special elections held before then. Last week's special election in the city's 24th Ward was the last one with punch-card ballots, in use since the 1970s.

Martin and fellow board members Angel McCormick Franks and Clarence Dula, the Democrat, said they weren't concerned about reports that a Florida county was ping Diebold. A test there showed that the voting equipment could be altered to produce fraudulent voting results without leaving any evidence.

"All systems rely on the integrity of the processes and the workers," Martin said. "It's who runs the machines and who delivers the ballots."

Diebold spokesman David Bear said that Diebold was "very happy and optimistic" about winning the city of St. Louis' contract.

He contended that the Florida test was "foolish and not reflective of how anyone would run an election."

The Ohio-based firm faces other problems. It was sued last week by investors who accuse it of making misleading claims about its systems, leading to artificially high stock prices. The firm has denied any wrongdoing.

Martin said that the choice was not an easy decision. The other finalists were Election Systems & Software and Sequoia Voting Systems, who also are competing for St. Louis County's contract.

The city's ion hinged, in part, on Diebold's willingness to offer no-cost extras to obtain the city contract. Among other things, Martin said, Diebold was offering a three-year warranty on its equipment and software. The others had only one-year warranties, with extra payments for extensions, he said.

Martin said he hopes to have a contract signed by the end of this week.