If this sale goes forward, ES&S will control a huge majority of the voting equipment market in the United States. According to Verified Voting, more than 120 million registered voters live in American jurisdictions using one of these two companies' systems. In contrast, the nation's third largest elections vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems, provides equipment in jurisdictions with only some 26 million registered voters -- and seems to be on shaky ground, having been sold several times in recent years and still waiting to have its latest optical scan system certified by the federal Election Assistance Commission.
 
Whether the sale goes through remains a question. Election integrity activists at Black Box Voting have pledged to fight it. ES&S (then called American Information Systems) previously attempted to consolidate the voting industry in 1997 with a purchase of Business Records Corporation (BRC), but the U.S. Department of Justice on anti-trust grounds required that acquisition of BRC to be split between ES&S and Sequoia.
 
Regardless of its ultimate outcome, this latest potential consolidation in ownership of our voting equipment highlights the broken nature of American election administration. We run democracy on the cheap at the national level, and pay for it with lost votes, untrustworthy software and exorbitant costs for public interest improvements due to companies recouping expenses by abusing their local monopolies.