Live free and Die Bold

This is great news, naturally via Bradblog:

Diebold Elections Systems, Inc. is no more. At least in name.

After a year and a half of conversely trying to dump their failed voting unit and/or lying to customers about the reliability and security of their voting systems, corporate parent Diebold is giving up the ghost of their election business which, according to an analyst in a Reuters report, was "responsible for less than 10 percent of Diebold's revenue, and 100 percent of its bad publicity."

According to a company statement [PDF] just released, Diebold Elections Systems, Inc. will become Premier Election Solutions as of today. The company president, David Byrd, who has overseen the disastrous election unit for some time, will stay on as President to go down with the ship, apparently

Applying full lipstick to the pig, the company statement declares, "The change to Premier signals a new beginning for the company." And President Byrd picks up where he left off, furiously polishing his turd, with the claim that "This is both a fresh identity for our company and a unique opportunity for us to concentrate our focus solely on proving best-in-class elections solutions for current and potential customers."

No word on when they'd begin that "focus" after years of claiming same, but doing anything but. They have, however, radically lowered their expected revenue statement for the year by $120 million.

After a string of disastrous reports on the quality and security of their voting systems, along with plummeting stock prices since last week, it seems clear that Diebold, the once-great, more-than-100-year old company, is doing whatever they can at this point to save the corporate parent. While their stock price (DBD) plummeted at today's opening bell, and is currently down some 5.6% from yesterday, the price has begun to rise again in the last hour or so on news of the sale.

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Who knows if this is enough to fix things, especially with Rove on the loose, but it is a start.