[Mb-civic] Diebold hires top Dem for PR blitz

[Mike Blaxill]

Good old Dems - there when you need them!

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_2958901

Diebold hires top Dem for PR blitz 
Former party chairman make the case for voting to
California
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

With a phone call and a retainer, Diebold CEO
Walden O'Dell has launched former Democratic
National Committee chairman Joe Andrew on a
50-state ambassadorship for electronic voting.

O'Dell said he ``wanted to reframe some of the
issues,'' Andrew said.

His first stop: California, the nation's largest
market for voting machines and the place where
Diebold's fortunes as the largest supplier of
electronic-voting machines in the nation could be
made or broken.

``Even if you have tremendous success every place
else,'' said Andrew, ``if you can't sell
technology in California, you're in trouble.''

The rest of the voting industry is selling
technology here. Millions in federal dollars sit
ready for counties to put at least one high-tech,
handicapped-accessible voting machine in every
polling place by January.

But in California, Diebold can't sell its
touchscreen voting machine, the AccuVote TSx, nor
can counties that bought thousands of the
machines in 2003 used them in elections.

More than $30 million worth of TSx machines sit
in three counties' warehouses, unapproved for
actual voting. More than $15 million worth of
earlier-generation Diebold touchscreens in
Alameda, Los Angeles and Plumas counties cannot
be used after January.

Andrew said computer scientists and e-voting
activists are standing in the way of a promising
technology, an ATM-like voting computer with such
a low error rate that more votes count. And that,
said Andrew, should work to the benefit of
Democrats.

The tour pairs Andrew with former Republican
congressional aide Melissa McKay, now working for
the public-relations firm, Ogilvy PR. But
California and its Democrats were clearly
Andrew's show.

Diebold's new charm offensive for Democrats
strikes some as a public-relations gambit, a
segue from mishaps and mistakes in its voting
business to the uncontroversial notion of making
more votes count for the elderly, minorities and
disabled voters.

``This is a new tactic, a new solution for a
company that, unlike other electronic-voting
companies, has a continuing public-relations
problem, certainly in California,'' said Dan
Seligson, editor of Electionline.org, a
nonpartisan clearinghouse for voting-reform
information.

``It's not based on nothing,'' Seligson said.
``It's based on the problems they've had.''

In three years in California, Diebold voting
devices have awarded thousands of votes to the
wrong candidates and broken down in two large
counties during a presidential primary. Two
successive state election chiefs, a Democrat and
a Republican, both have rejected the TSx.

Former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley suggested
criminal prosecution, citing misleading
statements by Diebold Election Systems executives
and ``reprehensible'' tactics. The state joined a
false-claims suit against the company and won a
$2.5 million settlement.

Last month, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson
cited poor performance in state testing, with
paper jams and software crashes in 28 percent of
machines used in a mock election.

But Andrew isn't traveling the nation to talk
about that or even to talk much about Diebold. So
why is a ranking Democratic operative who was
convinced Republicans ``stole'' the 2000 election
working for Diebold and O'Dell, a battlestate
fund-raiser for Bush-Cheney 2004?

It is Andrew's message







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- that paperless electronic voting is good for
Democrats - and his connections in Democratic
circles.

``Joseph's a smart guy and has a lot of contacts
out there,'' said Kimball Brace, president of
Election Data Services, a Washington-based
consultant on elections.

Andrew is tapping reliable Democratic
constituents - civil-rights groups, minority
groups such as the NAACP and the National
Association of Latino Elected Officials and such
disability groups as the Council for the Blind.

They rallied in 2001 under the umbrella of the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to rid the
nation of reviled punchcard voting, and Andrew
worked pro-bono as their lawyer. He delivered
bipartisan support for the Help America Vote Act.
Behind the act was the presumption that
electronic voting was salvation from the dimpled
and hanging chad and from having to resort to the
Supreme Court to decide the presidency.

But Congress delayed 16 crucial months in setting
up a new federal agency to oversee and enforce
standards for the new voting equipment. By 2003,
the debate over voting equipment shifted from
civil-rights groups and their lawyers to computer
scientists who argued that electronic voting was
too vulnerable to breakdowns, errors and fraud,
at least without any backup paper record of the
vote.

So far, they've been winning. Despite resistance
from Diebold and some other e-voting suppliers,
lawmakers in 25 states have passed laws requiring
a paper backup, for review by voters and in most
cases recounts by elections officials. Fourteen
other states and the District of Columbia are
debating such a requirement.

While Ohio, Mississippi and Utah are considering
large purchases of touchscreens, sales of
paper-based optical scanning machines so far are
outpacing sales of electronic-voting machines
since the 2004 election.

In California at least, Andrew sees civil-rights
leaders abdicating from a worthy cause. ``The
great irony is, it's the progressives - my side
of the aisle - who are against electronic voting
but have the most to benefit from it.''

The odd couple of Diebold and Andrew have ``their
work cut out for them,'' said Kim Alexander,
president of nonprofit California Voter
Foundation.

She acknowledges that electronic voting has
plenty going for it, such larger type for elderly
voters, ballot displays in multiple languages and
an audio ballot for visually impaired voters.

``But the way it's been implemented has been
irresponsible and reckless,'' Alexander said.
``What we've seen all across the country are
numerous examples of glitches and problems. I
wish that Diebold would put it's effort into
making better equipment and making its paper
trail work, rather than a PR campaign.''