Diebold Hires Top Dem for PR Blitz
The Oakland Tribune
By Ian Hoffman
With a phone call
and a retainer, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell has launched former
Democratic National Committee chairman Joe Andrew on a 50-state
ambassadorship for electronic voting.
O'Dell
said he “wanted to reframe some of the issues,'' Andrew said.
Andrew said computer scientists and e-voting activists are standing in
the way of a promising technology, an ATM-like voting computer with
such a low error rate that more votes count. And that, said Andrew,
should work to the benefit of Democrats.
Diebold's
new charm offensive for Democrats strikes some as a public-relations
gambit, a segue from mishaps and mistakes in its voting business to the
uncontroversial notion of making more votes count for the elderly,
minorities and disabled voters.
In three
years in California, Diebold voting devices have awarded thousands of
votes to the wrong candidates and broken down in two large counties
during a presidential primary. Two successive state election chiefs, a
Democrat and a Republican, both have rejected the TSx. Former Secretary
of State Kevin Shelley suggested criminal prosecution, citing
misleading statements by Diebold Election Systems executives and
“reprehensible'' tactics. The state joined a false-claims suit against
the company and won a $2.5 million settlement.
So why
is a ranking Democratic operative who was convinced Republicans “stole'' the 2000 election working for Diebold and O'Dell, a
battlestate fund-raiser for Bush-Cheney 2004?
(click here to read the entire story)
Blog For Iowa 
Um, because he sold his soul to the devil? Just guessing.
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