Editing Premier Election Solutions (section)

===States rejecting Diebold===
In 2004, after an initial investigation into the company's practices, [[Secretary of State of California]] [[Kevin Shelley]] issued a ban on one model of Diebold voting machines in that state. [[California Attorney General]] [[Bill Lockyer]], joined the state of California into a false claims suit filed in November 2003 by Bev Harris and Alameda County citizen Jim March.<ref>"[http://www.bbvdocs.org/legal/Alameda-Qui-Tam.pdf copy of case number RG031284] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120218213056/http://www.bbvdocs.org/legal/Alameda-Qui-Tam.pdf |date=February 18, 2012 }}"</ref><ref>"[http://www.seattlepi.com/local/209250_diebold25.html Vote machine maker settles over her whistle-blower suit]"</ref>

The suit charged that Diebold had given false information about the security and reliability of Diebold Election Systems machines that were sold to the state.  To settle the case, Diebold agreed to pay $2.6 million and to implement certain reforms.<ref>{{Cite news |last = Gimbel |first = Barney |title = Rage against the machine |newspaper = [[Fortune Magazine]] |date = November 3, 2006 |url = https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/11/13/8393084/index.htm }}</ref> On August 3, 2007, California Secretary of State [[Debra Bowen]] decertified Diebold and three other [[Electronic voting|electronic voting systems]] after a "top-to-bottom review of the voting machines certified for use in California in March 2007."<ref>{{cite web | title = Top-To-Bottom Review | publisher = California Secretary of State | date = August 3, 2007 | url = http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070817120818/http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm | archive-date = August 17, 2007 | access-date = August 10, 2007 }}</ref>

In April 2007, the [[Maryland General Assembly]] voted to replace paperless touchscreen voting machines with paper ballots counted by optical scanners, effective in time for the 2010 general (November) elections. The law, signed by the Governor in May 2007, was made contingent on the provision of funding by no later than April 2008. The Governor included such funding in his proposed budget in January 2008,<ref>{{cite web | title = TrueVote Applauds O'Malley For Funding Transition to Paper Ballot | publisher = VoteTrustUSA | date = January 16, 2008 | url = http://votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2715&Itemid=113 | access-date = August 15, 2008}}</ref> but the funding was defeated by the state House in July 2008.<ref>{{cite web|title=House defeats paper ballot funding |publisher=FCW.com |author=Michael Hardy |date=July 16, 2008 |url=http://www.fcw.com/online/news/153178-1.html |access-date=August 15, 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080804153308/http://www.fcw.com/online/news/153178-1.html |archive-date=August 4, 2008 }}</ref>

In March 2009, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen decertified Diebold's GEMS version 1.18.19 after the Humboldt County Election Transparency Project discovered that GEMS had silently dropped 197 ballots from its tabulation of a single precinct in Eureka, California.<ref>{{cite web|title=Withdrawal of Approval of GEMS 1.18.19 |publisher=State of California Secretary of State |date=March 30, 2009 |url=http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/premier/premier-11819-withdrawal-approval033009.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090627194219/http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/premier/premier-11819-withdrawal-approval033009.pdf |archive-date=June 27, 2009 }}</ref> The discovery was made after project members conducted an independent count using the ballot counting program [[Ballot Browser]].