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.
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.
The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State
Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold
as one of three firms eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to
Ohio counties
in time for the 2004 election.
Blackwell's announcement is still in limbo because of a court
challenge over the fairness of the selection process by a disqualified
bidder, Sequoia Voting Systems.
In his invitation letter, O'Dell asked guests to consider
donating or raising up to $10,000 each for the federal account that the state
GOP will use to help Bush and other federal candidates - money that
legislative Democratic leaders charged could come back to benefit Blackwell.
They urged Blackwell to remove Diebold
from the field of voting-machine companies eligible to sell to Ohio counties.
This is the second such request in as many months. State
Sen. Jeff Jacobson, a Dayton-area Republican, asked
Blackwell in July to disqualify Diebold after
security concerns arose over its equipment.
"Ordinary Ohioans may infer that Blackwell's office
is looking past Diebold's security issues because
its CEO is seeking $10,000 donations for Blackwell's party - donations that
could be made with statewide elected officials right
there in the same room," said Senate Democratic Leader Greg DiDonato.
Diebold spokeswoman
Michelle Griggy said O'Dell - who was unavailable
to comment personally - has held fund-raisers in his home for many causes,
including the Columbus Zoo, Op era Columbus, Catholic
Social Services and Ohio State University.
Ohio GOP spokesman Jason Mauk
said the party approached O'Dell about hosting the event at his home, the
historic Cotswold Manor, and not the other way around. Mauk
said that under federal campaign finance rules, the party cannot use any
money from its federal account for state- level candidates.
"To think that Diebold is
somehow tainted because they have a couple folks on their board who support
the president is just unfair," Mauk said.
Griggy said in
an e-mail statement that Diebold could not comment
on the political contributions of individual company employees.
Blackwell said Diebold is not
the only company with political connections - noting that lobbyists for
voting-machine makers read like a who's who of Columbus' powerful
and politically connected.
"Let me put it to you this way: If there was one
person uniquely involved in the political process, that might be
troubling," he said. "But there's no one that hasn't used every
legitimate avenue and bit of leverage that they could legally use to get
their product looked at. Believe me, if there is a
political lever to be pulled, all of them have pulled it."
Blackwell said he stands by the process used for selecting
voting machine vendors as fair, thorough and impartial.
As of yesterday, however, that determination lay with Ohio
Court of Claims Judge Fred Shoemaker.
He heard closing arguments yesterday over whether Sequoia
was unfairly eliminated by Blackwell midway through the final phase of
negotiations.
Shoemaker extended a temporary restraining order in the
case for 14 days, but said he hopes to issue his opinion sooner than that.
© 2003 The
Plain Dealer
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