"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times and perhaps I should find a new voting system vendor. Maryland is looking forward to a smooth, problem-free election thanks to a Diebold black bag job that quietly made modifications to thousands of the state's voting machines without properly briefing Maryland's Board of Elections. In 2004, Diebold replaced bad motherboards in a number of its electronic voting machines while telling election officials they were merely installing "technical refreshers." According to Gilles Burger, chairman of the State Board of Elections, Diebold discovered the problem -- which caused the machines' screens to freeze -- three years earlier but never bothered to mention it to anyone. "This demonstrates the level of contractor oversight that Diebold requires," Burger told The Baltimore Sun. "On Monday, I'm going to ask our attorneys to report back to me if there was any violation of the contract and what financial remedies are available to me."

A troubling disclosure, no? After all, this isn't the first time Diebold has modified its machines without notifying election officials. With November elections nearly upon us, pencil and paper is looking better. "

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