In 2001, security giant Diebold bought its elections division for $31 million. Today, it sold it to a competitor for $5 million. The company said elections had become a "distraction" and now a sad chapter in democracy has closed. Maybe.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama traded states again last night, but Obama is only a handful of delegates away from securing the Democratic Party's nomination. The latest Web metric — widgets embedded on social-network pages — puts him firmly in the lead against John McCain. If only widgets counted as much as having a Republican running voting-machine maker Diebold. [ReadWriteWeb] (Photo by Steve Jurvetson)

Voting machine-haters, take heart. In August, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen withdrew approval of San Francisco's ESS InkaVote optically scanned ballots for tomorrow's election. That means the city known for its Web 2.0 boomlet will have to hand-count the election, a process that could take weeks to determine the outcome of tight contests. Way to go, Frisco! If you're looking to catch up on e-voting shenanigans, BradBlog isn't as nutty as the site's design suggests. My favorite twist: Disgraced machine maker Diebold has renamed itself to — wait for it — Premier Election Solutions.

Despite Wikipedia's growing sophistication and greater scrutiny placed on content manipulation, individuals and organizations are still tempted to edit Jimmy Wales's online encyclopedia for personal gain by posting under the veil of anonymity. But that veil just became a little more tattered. Virgil Griffith, a Cal Tech graduate student, has an eye on you, Wikipedia tinkerers. He's developed Wikipedia Scanner, a database that correlates the IP address of anonymous posters with the owners of the associated block of IP addresses. That data does not identify individuals, but it's usually good enough to pinpoint organizations from which they make the edits.

Tech Firm Shows Off Glitch-Free Software [Washington Post]