In a surprise decision Thursday, North Carolina’s State Board of Elections certified Diebold and two other voting system manufacturers as approved to do business in the state, despite the companies’ failure to meet new requirements in state election law.

Despite Diebold’s asserted inability to meet the requirements of state law, the North Carolina Board of Elections [Thursday] happily certified Diebold without condition. Never mind all of that third party software. Never mind the impossibility of obtaining a list of programmers who had contributed to that code. . . .

What’s next? As a result of EFF’s successful court challenge on Monday, Diebold is still on the hook for criminal and civil liability for failing to meet the escrow and programmer disclosure requirements of the statute. But as today’s developments indicate, the North Carolina state government apparently doesn’t have the stomach to resist the full-court press of Diebold, even if it means utterly ignoring statutory obligations. — Matt Zimmerman, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Instead, the election board told the companies they could escrow their code with a third party, and simply tell them who the third party is. They have until December 22 to comply.

“The Board of Elections has simply flouted the law,” said EFF Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. “In August, the state passed tough new rules designed to ensure transparency in the election process, and the Board simply decided to take it upon itself to overrule the legislature. The Board’s job is to protect voters, not corporations who want to obtain multi-million dollar contracts with the state.”

So much for election integrity.