Diebold's recent sale of its election systems division to ES&S is under scrutiny by the Justice Department's antitrust division. The acquisition gives ES&S nearly 70% control of the U.S. voting systems market.

Diebold was smart to unload this dog. As one pundit put it, their election systems generated less than 10% of their revenues and 100% of their bad publicity. Their idiot former CEO didn't help by famously promising to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush" in 2004. (The company is located in Ohio.) Election systems accounted for only 4.8% of their revenues in 2008, and most of that was in Brazil.

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In an apparent attempt to mitigate the PR damage and distance themselves from the politics, Diebold spun off the election systems division into a wholly-owned subsidiary, Premier Election Solutions, in 2007. This didn't stop Cuyahoga County, OH from suing them for allegedly supplying defective equipment, or from trying to "pierce the corporate veil" to hold parent company Diebold liable.

Diebold was stupid to get in this business in the first place. Their banking equipment and services are highly regarded in the industry, and their products such as ATMs are first class as is their customer support and service. But banking is all about trust, and bad publicity about their black-box voting systems likely didn't help in this regard.

Diebold acknowledged this in their 2008 annual report:

Because of the political nature of our election systems business, various individuals and advocacy groups may raise challenges, including legal challenges, in the media and elsewhere, about the reliability and security of our election systems products and services. Our election systems business is vulnerable to these types of challenges because the electronic election systems industry is emerging.

Our ability to grow will depend on the extent to which potential customers accept our products. This acceptance may be limited by:

• the failure of prospective customers to conclude that our products are valuable and should be used;

• the reluctance of prospective customers to replace their existing solutions with our products; and

• marketing efforts of our competitors.

Furthermore, adverse publicity, whether directed at our products or a competitor’s products due to processing errors or other system failures, could adversely affect the electronic election systems industry as a whole, and this would have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results. In addition, these efforts may adversely affect our relations with our election systems customers.

So, unloading it was the smart thing to do. Whether it's smart for one company to now control 70% of the voting machines in America is a question the DOJ is looking in to.

MORE: AP: Is a voting machine merger too big to stand?