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Published on Wednesday, February 25, 2004 by the Free Press, Columbus, Ohiio
Diebold, Electronic Voting and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
by Bob Fitrakis


The Governor of Ohio, Bob Taft, and other prominent state officials, commute to their downtown Columbus offices on Broad Street. This is the so-called ?Golden Finger,? the safe route through the majority black inner-city near east side. The Broad Street BP station, just east of downtown, is the place where affluent suburbanites from Bexley can stop, gas up, get their coffee and New York Times. Those in need of cash visit BP?s Diebold manufactured CashSource+ ATM machine which provides a paper receipt of the transaction to all customers upon request.

Many of Taft?s and President George W. Bush?s major donors, like Diebold?s current CEO Walden ?Wally? O?Dell, reside in Columbus? northwest suburb Upper Arlington. O?Dell is on record stating that he is ?committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President? this year. On September 26, 2003, he hosted an Ohio Republican Party fundraiser for Bush?s re-election at his Cotswold Manor mansion. Tickets to the fundraiser cost $1000 per couple, but O?Dell?s fundraising letter urged those attending to ?Donate or raise $10,000 for the Ohio Republican Party.?

According to the Columbus Dispatch: ?Last year, O?Dell and his wife Patricia, campaigned for passage of two liquor options that made their portion of Tremont Road wet.

On November 5, Upper Arlington residents narrowly passed measures that allowed fundraising parties to offer more than beer, even though his 10,800-square-foot home is a residence, a permit is required because alcohol is included in the price of fundraising tickets. O?Dell is also allowed to serve ?beer, wine and mixed drinks? at Sunday fundraisers.

O?Dell?s fund-raising letter followed on the heels of a visit to President Bush?s Crawford Texas ranch by ?Pioneers and Rangers,? the designation for people who had raised $100,000 or more for Bush?s re-election.

If Ohio?s Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has his way, Diebold will receive a contract to supply touch screen electronic voting machines for much of the state. None of these Diebold machines will provide a paper receipt of the vote.

Diebold, located in North Canton, Ohio, does its primary business in ATM and ticket-vending machines. Critics of Diebold point out that virtually every other machine the company makes provides a paper trail to verify the machine?s calculations. Oddly, only the voting machines lack this essential function.

State Senator Teresa Fedor of Toledo introduced Senate Bill 167 late last year mandating that every voting machine in Ohio generate a ?voter verified paper audit trail.? Secretary of State Blackwell has denounced any attempt to require a paper trail as an effort to ?derail? election reform. Blackwell?s political career is an interesting one: he emerged as a black activist in Cincinnati supporting municipal charter reform, became an elected Democrat, then an Independent, and now is a prominent Republican with his eyes on the Governor?s mansion.

Voter fraud

A joint study by the California and Massachusetts Institutes of Technology following the 2000 election determined that between 1.5 and 2 million votes were not counted due to confusing paper ballots or faulty equipment. The federal government?s solution to the problem was to pass the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.

One of the law?s stated goals was ?Replacement of punch card and lever voting machines.? The new voting machines would be high-tech touch screen computers, but if there?s no paper trail, how do you know if there?s been a computer glitch? How can the results be trusted? And how do you recount to see if the actual votes match the computer?s tally?

Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century, argues that without a paper trail, these machines are open to massive voter fraud. Diebold has already placed some 50,000 machines in 37 states and their track record is causing Harris, Johns Hopkins University professors and others great concern.

Johns Hopkins researchers at the Information Security Institute issued a report declaring that Diebold?s electronic voting software contained ?stunning flaws.? The researchers concluded that vote totals could be altered at the voting machines and by remote access. Diebold vigorously refuted the Johns Hopkins report, claiming the researchers came to ?a multitude of false conclusions.?

Perhaps to settle the issue, someone illegally hacked into the Diebold Election Systems website in March 2003 and stole internal documents from the company and posted them online. Diebold went to court to stop, according to court records, the ?wholesale reproduction? of some 13,000 pages of company material.

The Associated Press reported in November 2003 that: ?Computer programmers, ISPs and students at [at] least 20 universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received cease and desist letters? from Diebold. A group of Swarthmore College students launched an ?electronic civil disobedience? campaign to keep the hacked documents permanently posted on the Internet.

Harris writes that the hacked documents expose how the mainstream media reversed their call projecting Al Gore as winner of Florida after someone ?subtracted 16,022 votes from Al Gore, and in still some undefined way, added 4000 erroneous votes to George W. Bush.? Hours later, the votes were returned. One memo from Lana Hires of Global Election Systems, now Diebold, reads: ?I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16,022 [votes] when it was uploaded.? Another hacked internal memo, written by Talbot Iredale, Senior VP of Research and Development for Diebold Election Systems, documents ?unauthorized? replacement votes in Volusia County.

Harris also uncovered a revealing 87-page CBS news report and noted, ?According to CBS documents, the erroneous 20,000 votes in Volusia was directly responsible to calling the election for Bush.? The first person to call the election for Bush was Fox election analyst John Ellis, who had the advantage of conferring with his prominent cousins George W. Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Incestuous relationships

Increasingly, investigative writers seeking an explanation have looked to Diebold?s history for clues. The electronic voting industry is dominated by only a few corporations ? Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and Sequoia. Diebold and ES&S combined count an estimated 80% of U.S. black box electronic votes.

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