{"id":7592,"date":"2009-12-19T18:41:50","date_gmt":"2009-12-20T02:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=7592"},"modified":"2026-04-24T00:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T07:29:13","slug":"doj-now-investigating-dieboldess-merger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7592","title":{"rendered":"DoJ Now Investigating Diebold\/ES&S Merger"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday we reported<\/a> that Florida’s AG office was investigating the recent acquisition of Diebold’s voting machine unit by its larger\/largest “competitor,” ES&S, for possible violations of anti-trust statutes in the state. Today, the New York Post<\/i> reports<\/a> that the U.S. Dept. of Justice is also actively investigating the same thing — along with 14 states in total — and may “file a suit to unwind the deal” next month…<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice could vote down an already-completed merger of the two biggest makers of voting machines.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department, Florida and 13 other states have opened investigations into the September marriage between Election Systems & Software and Diebold’s Premier Election Solutions, which played a controversial role in the 2004 presidential election, according to a source with direct knowledge of the process.<\/p>\n

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is planning to hold hearings on the matter next month, the source said.<\/p>\n

Even though the merger gave ES&S a whopping 70 percent of the voting-machine market share, the $5 million deal was too small to require government approval.<\/p>\n

Now, the Justice Department is looking into the matter and next month could file a suit to unwind the deal, the source said.<\/p><\/div>\n

Though the Post<\/i> story seems to be based on a single, unnamed “source,” they also note that “A Diebold spokesman confirmed the Ohio ATM maker was cooperating with a Justice Department investigation.”<\/p>\n

And while there are other “Justice Department investigation[s]” that Diebold is also cooperating with — as The BRAD BLOG noted early this year<\/a>, when the company’s Chief Financial Officer was forced to stop down: “[Diebold has been] been facing a class-action securities fraud lawsuit<\/a> from shareholders since 2005; under SEC investigation<\/a> since 2006; and under DoJ investigation<\/a> since 2007; and admitted overstating ’07 earnings<\/a> in early 2008″ — Reuters coverage of the story<\/a> offers more direct confirmation of the DoJ probe of this<\/i> particular matter. “Diebold spokesman Michael Jacobsen said in an email that the company was cooperating with the Justice Department review of the sale,” they report tonight.<\/p>\n

BlackBoxVoting.org’s<\/a> Bev Harris deserves much credit here, both for helping to get the anti-trust ball moving when the merger was first announced in September, as we reported at the time<\/a>, but also for providing the DoJ a great deal of information, statistics, financial and legal analysis demonstrating the monopolistic nature of the sale, and the harm it presents to our already in-tatters system of election in the U.S.. See BBV’s additional coverage here<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Thursday we reported that Florida’s AG office was investigating the recent acquisition of Diebold’s voting machine unit by its larger\/largest “competitor,” ES&S, for possible violations of anti-trust statutes in the state. Today, the New York Post reports that the U.S. Dept. of Justice is also actively investigating the same thing — along with 14 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[223,3,28,5],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dept-of-justice","category-dieboldpremier","category-election-reform","category-ess"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7592"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=7592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}