Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Ohio Election

Diebold strikes again.

With over 100,000 absentee ballots in this county alone, the Board of Elections filed a lawsuit to try to get permission, not to tabulate the votes on these ballots, but to scan the ballots to record the votes in the computers. Kenneth Blackwell, the guy in charge of the elections in Ohio, would not allow the scanning to be done, even though the local Board claimed that it could not count all of the absentee ballots on election day.

Republican Kenneth Blackwell, while in charge of running the election, happens to be running for governor of Ohio. He doesn't admit that this might be a conflict of interest, just as he claimed being chairman of the Bush campaign in Ohio in 2004 was not a conflict of interest.

Blackwell's campaign received money from Diebold. Diebold was awarded the contract for supplying a computerized voting process without a competitive bid from any other company. In fact, Blackwell denied another company from submitting a bid, claiming that the company had no experience.

Diebold is the same company that replaced mother boards in voting machines in Maryland without any direction or knowledge of the election officials in Maryland. Diebold employees probably thought they had the same power in Maryland that they have in Ohio.

The judge in the scanning lawsuit ruled in favor of the local Board of Elections.

So, after the ruling, the Board of Elections ran test ballots through the scanners supplied by Diebold. The scanners didn't work on marked test ballots that had been folded and unfolded. All absentee ballots received in the mail are folded.

Apparently, previous Diebold tests, performed by Diebold for the Board of Elections in this heavily Democratic area of the state, where Blackwell is expected to do poorly against his Democratic opponent, Ted Strickland, did not include ballots that had been folded.

You may ask yourself how something as stupid as this could happen when the company claims in its website, "We're making sure that every vote is cast, counted and clearly accurate. It's all about preserving the voting process. And preserving freedom."

Preserving the voting process ... yeah, right.

Preserving freedom ... I've heard that phrase a lot since 9/11/2001 ... like if it is chanted over and over and over, I will somehow be convinced it is true. Methinks thou doth protest too much.

If you would like to try to get an answer to the question, on Monday morning at 9 a.m., Eastern Time, please call the Product Information Department at 1-330-490-4000 for your answer. And if you don't want to spend the money for a long distance call, try 800-999-3600.

Posted by Bill at November 4, 2006 10:13 PM