"Voting Machine Controversy", by Julie Carr Smyth, Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 28, 2003, reprinted in Common Dreams News Center. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm (also see AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org/election04oh/19624/) "COLUMBUS - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is 'committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year'. The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election."
Can you imagine the audacity of the Chief Executive of a voting machine company boldly coming out to support President Bush in 2004, even going so far as to say that he and his Diebold Company are dedicated to delivering Ohio votes for Bush in 2004! A company who is manufacturing electronic voting machines should go to great lengths to protect their integrity of impartiality. After all, a voting machine is to be the unbiased instrument by which voters express their will, not the biased means by which one candidate, and his party, achieve a goal which is pre-determined!
This story just gets worse.
"O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington." (Ibid.)
Can you imagine the audacity of the Chief Executive of a voting machine company boldly coming out to support President Bush in 2004, even going so far as to say that he and his Diebold Company are dedicated to delivering Ohio votes for Bush in 2004! A company who is manufacturing electronic voting machines should go to great lengths to protect their integrity of impartiality. After all, a voting machine is to be the unbiased instrument by which voters express their will, not the biased means by which one candidate, and his party, achieve a goal which is pre-determined!
This story just gets worse.
"O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington." (Ibid.)
