Diebold Inc (NYSE: DBD) said yesterday that it had failed to sell its voting technology unit, Diebold Election Systems, whose products are currently being used in elections across the country. Instead, the company will allow the unit to operate independently, giving the unit a separate board of directors and possibly even a new management structure.

It's no wonder nobody wants want to touch Diebold Election Systems. Last year, Princeton researchers made a demonstration video on how simple it is to corrupt a Diebold voting machine. The report even highlighted a flaw in Diebold machines that allow a virus to jump from machine to machine, infecting one memory card and using it to spread the virus through other machines.

Diebold's decision to distance itself from its own Elections unit was made in part because of "the rapidly evolving political uncertainties and controversies surrounding state and jurisdiction purchases of electronic voting systems." In other words, Diebold "rapidly" discovered that the public lacked any trust in its product, and it was ruining its reputation. Note the new elections unit will operate under a new name, Premier Election Solutions, and lacks one important word within its title: Diebold.

Tuesday's Brad Blog brought my attention to the famed Princeton Diebold (NYSE: DBD) Virus Hack, last summer's break-in of Princeton University's Diebold touch-screen voting system. Princeton's study found that to steal an election, all someone had to do was gain access to the system and slip a vote-swapping virus onto a single machine, which then had the potential to affect every other machine in the country and -- Ta da! Election stolen, game over.

After discovering the hack, Diebold, which specializes in technology that people use to access their services whenever and wherever they may choose, posted a picture of "the key" on their Web site -- the same key that opens every single voting touch-screen machine in the system. Of course, J. Alex Halderman, one of the people involved in the Princeton Hack, had a friend who discovered the Web page and realized that he could very easily and cheaply make a working copy of that same key right from the photo. Voting security? Not so much.

While Diebold eventually removed the photo of the key from its Web site, it remains to be seen how many saw it and had the same thoughts as Mr. Halderman's friend and how many other voting machines, file cabinets and office supplies are at risk.

Even more frightening, it was announced that Diebold "recently earned certification from the General Services Administration to deliver security integration services that meet the requirements of the Homeland Security Presidential Directive." In addition, Diebold was hired to secure the founding documents of America: the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Maybe it's just me, but the Virus Hack debacle highlights holes not only in Diebold's machines' securities, but Diebold itself. I for one, wouldn't want them working on matters of national security -- if their machines are so easily hacked into, what would that say about our country? I'd like to think that at the very least, our country's security leaders learned a few things from this incident, but I'm going to have to assume that they didn't.

As unbelievable as it may sound, Princeton University found that the company name and stock ticker symbol affect the performance of its stock in the days following its initial public offering (IPO).  Specifically, stocks with easier pronounced company names and ticker symbols perform better on their first days of trading.

Two Princeton University psychologists studied IPOs on NYSE and AMEX and found that investors prefer to buy new offerings of companies with an easier name.  Similarly, the case is true with the stock ticker symbol.  For example, the ticker BAL would perform better than BDL right after the IPO.

So while investors all try to invest from a rational mind set, we are apparently susceptible to mental and emotional influences, suggesting psychology should also be considered as contributing to economic theory, according to the researchers.

While the effect is the same regardless of company size, the researchers are quick to point out that this not an indicator of long-term performance. Nor should the study be given significant consideration by investors and influence their IPO decisions, the researchers say -- especially since investors will hopefully correct this now that the study has been released.