From Michael Petrelis (courtesy Raw Story) comes this news of more political campaign contributions shenagins by our favorite voting machine vendor:
Despite a ban on political contributions from Diebold executives, implemented in June of 2004 after the voting machine corporation’s chief executive officer, Walden O’Dell, came under heavy criticism for hosting a fundraiser for George W. Bush and signing a letter promising to deliver Ohio’s electoral college vote to him. One Diebold leader apparently never got the memo about the ban.
. . . A Federal Election Commission file on Isac Tabib reveals he made a $1,000 this past June to Republican U.S. Senator Michael DeWine, who’s up for reelection in 2006. Why let a little thing like the company’s policy prohibiting such contributions stop Tabib from writing out a check to DeWine?
Update [2005-12-8 15:22:41 by Steven D]: The Cleveland Plain Dealer has more:
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Julie Carr Smyth
Plain Dealer BureauColumbus
— Money from three Diebold executives began trickling into two Republican campaigns last August, just two months after the voting-machine maker banned political giving by a handful of its top brass.
Mike Jacobsen, a spokesman for the manufacturer based in Green, Ohio, expressed regret over the donations, which totaled $1,400 to U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine and state Sen. Kirk Schuring of Canton, according to campaign finance reports.
But he said the three officials who gave were not subject to the 2004 ethics policy changes, which applied only to the chief executive, Walden O’Dell; president; chief financial officer; and vice president in charge of Diebold Election Systems.
News of the donations came as a voluminous election-reform bill was set to clear a key Ohio Senate committee late Wednesday, bearing evidence of continued political strife over what constituted the worst problems in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.
Republican lawmakers, indignant over suggestions that President Bush’s victories are somehow suspect, used the measure to crack down on potential abuse of the election system.
The proposal – likely to win Senate approval soon – mandates that all voters show identification to vote, makes it tougher to get a constitutional amendment on Ohio’s ballot, and severely limits the scope of voter registration drives.
Democrats left the room still insisting the biggest problems in the past two national elections were voter disenfranchisement and unreliable technology, for which they see Diebold as a poster child.
Cleveland NAACP director Stanley Miller blasted the voter-ID provision as harking back to the Jim Crow laws of the old South.
“We do not believe this body intends to try to take us back in time, but the lack of trust and skepticism that exists today makes these types of changes tough to sell,” he testified.
Yes, the Republican Party’s answer in Ohio to charges of vote supression and voting machine irregularities:
Pass a law making it harder for poor people and minorities to vote, while ignoring the corruption represented by lobbyists, corporations and others who have flouted the campaign finance laws, and also ignoring the evidence that Diebold’s electronic voting machines have significant issues regarding their ability to accurately count all the votes.
This isn’t a Democracy anymore, people. At best we are seeing an attempt by a corrupt Republican Party to convert our Republic into a system of one party rule as experienced by Mexico under the PRI and Japan under the LDP.
At worst?
Like John Lennon says (though not in this context obviously): Imagine.
