Brad Blog: Dieb Throat weighs in on Diebold's stunning stock plunge

[AtLiberty]

DIEB-THROAT Weighs in on Diebold's Stunning 15.5% Wednesday Stock Plunge

Disputes Voting Machine Company's Explanations for Lowered Forecasts, Compares Company to Enron...

Points to Mismanagement, Failed Voting Equipment, Homeland Security Warnings and CEO O'Dell's $3m Salary as More Likely Causes

9/22/05
Brad Blog

Our still-anonymous Diebold Insider -- who we call DIEB-THROAT -- has some thoughts on Wednesday's sudden and stunning 15.5% one-day plunge in Diebold, Inc. share prices as reported earlier today by The BRAD BLOG.

"What a difference a few months makes," DIEB-THROAT wrote after the market close on Wednesday. "Back in July, Diebold told investors during its conference call the election revenues were sound and expected to grow." Yes, DIEB-THROAT was on that conference call. "Now all of a sudden Diebold's O'Dell tells investors of $10 million in lower revenues from election systems alone. Perhaps what Diebold isn't talking about is the $500,000 a month in legal fees they were spending in California, or the current rash of problems with touch screen systems that freeze up when votes are cast. Using Hurricane Katrina is a poor excuse for bad products - the last time this kind of deception occurred it was called Enron."

The blistering comments about Hurricane Katrina were in regard to Diebold's press release early Wednesday morning attributing much of their lowered forecasts for 3rd quarter and full-year earnings to the hurricane. The "freeze up" on Diebold's touch-screen voting machines has long plagued the North Canton, Ohio-based company, and a recent massive test of the equipment by California's Republican Sec. of State Bruce McPhereson confirmed that a full 20% of Diebold's machines either froze up or had printer jams.

When The BRAD BLOG spoke last week with Diebold spokesperson, David Bear about the California tests, Bear repeated several times times that "there were a total of 10 printer-jams after 11,000 votes were cast." When asked several times about similar statistics concerning the number of screen freeze-ups, Bear was unable to give us any information or numbers whatsoever.

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[AtLiberty]

1. P.S.

XOXOX to Brad! ;)

[benburch]

2. Brad is a class act! nt

[orwell]

3. The Stock

is most probably getting creamed from the lowered earnings expectations. The Street hates that crap.

Printers jams...that's a laugh...what are they printing...it certainly isn't a paper trail.

If Diebold, who made its name in banking equipment, is really in trouble, it would be a perfect time for a (cough)-liberal-(cough) consortium (Soros are you listening) to buy the company and take it private. Then they could release the first open source, paper trail ballot machines. These would be inherently more reliable than the proprietary black boxes they produce now plagued with all that hidden election theft code. (Wouldn't it be sweet if after buying Diebold, they found the rigged source code...heh heh)

At the very least they could assure themselves of not only increasing market share vis a vis the closed source competition, they might be able to blunt the Pug vote rigging, at least somewhat.

Just a thought.