The Help America Vote Act HAVA of 2002 was the spark that lit the ignition for electronic voting machines. This opened the flood gates into the election industry since the government would help states, cities and municipalities buy new voting equipment. Diebold, which had a division producing machines for Brazil, seeing a cash cow from the US government acquired a small outfit out of Texas and at the time became the dominant player in the industry.
In the 2002-2004 time frame Georgia, Alaska and Utah bought electronic voting machines for the entire state. In other instances the counties bought from vendors so there would be a hodgepodge of machines used in a state due to each county selecting the equipment from a different vendor. The three big players were Diebold, Hart Civic and ES&S. Dominion did not exist in the US market in this time frame. Diebold sold their US voting systems division to ES&S in 2009 and are no longer in the industry in the US. HAVA induced the buying of voting machines even if they weren’t needed due to the fed helping pay for it. The voting machines also use Windows OS and all the problems that are coming to light today have been known since HAVA was passed.
Back in the early 00s I had stock in Diebold so this was in the news and for a small division it overshadowed Diebold’s main business of banking equipment and service. For a few years after HAVA the elections division was the company champion for operating income due to all the federal dollars flowing in the industry. Then about 2005, when most states, cities and municipalities had bought their voting equipment the division became a PR nightmare for Diebold and they put it up for sale.
thanks for that...short slide
IMO, The Help America Vote Act should have allowed Pres. Trump to get at the states’ databases.
The Feds paid for them. I wondered why Pres. Trump never pursued it and essentially caved.