TALLAHASSEE -- The nation's largest election company is purchasing a rival in a major deal that will make it the sole provider of voting machines in 65 of Florida's 67 counties and much of the nation.

Election Systems & Software's $5 million acquisition of Diebold Inc.'s voting company has prompted fears that the private company will become a monopoly that's bad for democracy.

Last week, another voting company, Hart InterCivic, asked a federal court to declare the transaction an illegal monopoly. A U.S. senator also asked the Department of Justice's antitrust division for a review.

``I am deeply concerned that local governments and taxpayers will not be getting a fair deal because too much market power will be held in too few hands,'' Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a Sept. 14 letter to the department.

Schumer and Hart InterCivic estimate ES&S would control anywhere from 68 percent to nearly 75 percent of all the voting machines in the nation.

Announced Sept. 2, the deal worries election supervisors and reform advocates in Florida, the nation's largest swing state and a proving-ground for election controversies since the disputed 2000 presidential election.

But ES&S, based in Omaha, said in a written statement that its purchase of Diebold's voting-machine company, Premier Election Solutions, will actually improve elections ``and will result in better products and services for all customers and voters alike.''

Aldo Tesi, president and CEO of ES&S, said the company is ``committed to meeting current and future needs for voting system solutions and services and providing better solutions to our customers.''

Right now, ES&S operates in 33 Florida counties, including some of the most populous: Miami-Dade, Broward, Pinellas and Orange. Just two counties, Palm Beach and Indian River, use Sequioa Voting Systems equipment. Diebold operates in 32 counties, many of them small. The exception: the fourth-most populous county, Hillsborough (Tampa).

Hillsborough election chief Earl Lennard said he has concerns with the deal.

``Any time there's a lessening of competition, there should be an increase in vigilance,'' Lennard said.

Florida's maverick election supervisor, Leon County's Ion Sancho, is more worried.

``ES&S acted like a monopoly even before it decided to become a monopoly,'' Sancho said, calling the purchase ``deleterious to democracy.''

Sancho said the company once attempted to pressure him into signing a contract that would have forced his staff to rely on ES&S to lay out ballot designs, supply the ballot paper and print the ballots.

ES&S spokesman Ken Fields said the company isn't pressuring counties into making bad deals. Instead, he said, it works with individual counties to provide the services and products they need to run elections effectively.

In Miami-Dade, Election Supervisor Lester Sola said the county made sure to negotiate a contract giving it control of ballot layout and printing.

But Sancho said small counties are at a disadvantage because they don't have a great amount of purchasing power to negotiate favorable terms. He said ES&S pursued him as a client for two years but then no longer wanted to do business with him after he invited computer scientist Hari Hursti to perform a computer hack on Leon County's optical-scan Diebold machines in December 2005. Sancho wanted to underscore the need for a paper trail during elections for recount purposes.

The experiment showed that a computer-savvy insider could electronically stuff ballot boxes and manipulate election results without leaving a trace. Diebold said the ``foolish and irresponsible'' hack proved nothing because it wasn't conducted in a real-world setting. Diebold agreed to sell Sancho needed upgrades after then-Attorney General Charlie Crist threatened to open an anti-trust investigation into the three companies.

Once Crist became governor in 2007, his administration required Diebold to make its software more hacker-proof.

Crist also successfully pushed to nearly ban the controversial ATM-style touch-screen voting machines and replace them with paper-trail ballot machines.

ES&S made the touch-screen voting machines that had a disproportionately high number of non-votes in the 2006 congressional race to replace Rep. Katherine Harris. She was the secretary of state during the 2000 elections crisis that led to the banning of punch card machines in Florida, some of which ES&S supplied.

Florida's current secretary of state, Kurt Browning, expressed confidence in Florida's voting systems, its rigorous certification process and ES&S. Browning said he wasn't concerned with ES&S' purchase of Diebold, but he wanted to see more details about the sale before commenting further. ``It may be too early to hit the panic button,'' Browning said.

Marc Caputo can be reached at mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com

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