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Diebold ceo committed to bush { November 9 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/yourmoney/09vote.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/yourmoney/09vote.html
MONEY AND BUSINESS/FINANCIAL DESK | November 9, 2003, Sunday
Machine Politics in the Digital Age
By MELANIE WARNER
Published: November 9, 2003
In mid-August, Walden W. O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc., sat down at his computer to compose a letter inviting 100 wealthy and politically inclined friends to a Republican Party fund-raiser, to be held at his home in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year," wrote Mr. O'Dell, whose company is based in Canton, Ohio.
That is hardly unusual for Mr. O'Dell. A longtime Republican, he is a member of President Bush's "Rangers and Pioneers,'' an elite group of loyalists who have raised at least $100,000 each for the 2004 race.
But it is not the only way that Mr. O'Dell is involved in the election process. Through Diebold Election Systems, a subsidiary in McKinney, Tex., his company is among the country's biggest suppliers of paperless, touch-screen voting machines.
Judging from Federal Election Commission data, at least eight million people will cast their ballots using Diebold machines next November. That is 8 percent of the number of people who voted in 2000, and includes all voters in the states of Georgia and Maryland and those in various counties of California, Virginia, Texas, Indiana, Arizona and Kansas.
Some people find Mr. O'Dell's pairing of interests - as voting-machine magnate and devoted Republican fund-raiser - troubling. To skeptics, including more than a few Democrats, it raises at least the appearance of an ethical problem. Some of the chatter on the Internet goes so far as to suggest that he could use his own machines to sway the election.
Senator Jon Corzine, Democrat of New Jersey, does not buy such conspiracy theories, but he said he was appalled at the situation.
"It's outrageous," he said. "Not only does Mr. O'Dell want the contract to provide every voting machine in the nation for the next election - he wants to 'deliver' the election to Mr. Bush. There are enough conflicts in this story to fill an ethics manual."
Mr. O'Dell declined to be interviewed for this article, but a company official said that his political affiliations had nothing to do with Diebold's operations, and that the company derived the bulk of its revenue from A.T.M.'s, not voting machines. "This is not Diebold; this is Wally O'Dell personally," said Thomas W. Swidarski, senior vice president for strategic development and global marketing at Diebold, who works closely with Mr. O'Dell. "The issue has been misconstrued."
BUT the controversy surrounding Diebold goes beyond its chief executive's political activities. In July, professors at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University analyzed the software code for the company's touch-screen voting machines and concluded that there was "no evidence of rigorous software engineering discipline" and that "cryptography, when used at all, is used incorrectly."
Making matters worse, the software code for the machines was discovered in January by a Seattle-area writer on a publicly accessible Internet site. That the code was unprotected constitutes a significant security lapse by Diebold, said Aviel D. Rubin, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins, co-author of the study of the code.
Mr. Swidarski said the code on the Internet site was outdated and was not now in use in machines.
About 15,000 internal Diebold e-mail messages also found their way to the Internet. Some referred to software patches installed on Diebold machines days before elections. Others indicated that the Microsoft Access database used in Diebold's tabulation servers was not protected by passwords. Diebold, which says passwords are now installed on machines, is threatening legal action against anyone who posts the files or links to them, contending that the e-mail is copyrighted.
A recent report for the state of Maryland by SAIC, an engineering and research firm, has added to concerns about the security of Diebold's systems. It recommended 17 steps that Maryland election officials could take to ensure better security when using Diebold's machines.
The company seized upon this as evidence that its systems, if used properly, were secure. But the report's overall assessment was not particularly upbeat. "The system, as implemented in policy, procedure and technology, is at high risk of compromise," SAIC wrote.
It has been a bumpy couple of months for Mr. O'Dell, 58, who is known as Wally and spent 33 years at Emerson Electric before joining what is now Diebold Election Systems. Associates say he was stunned by the reaction to his August letter and now regrets writing it.
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