The BRAD BLOG can now report that a Securities Fraud Class Action suit has been filed against Diebold, Inc. (stock symbol: DBD) naming eight top executive officers in the company as co-defendants. The suit has been filed by plaintiff Janice Konkol, alleging securities fraud against the North Canton, Ohio-based manufacturer of Voting Systems and ATM machines on behalf of investors who owned shares of Diebold stock and lost money due to an alleged fraudulent scheme by the company and its executives to deceive shareholders during the “class period” of October 22, 2003 through September 21, 2005.
The suit was filed today in U.S. Federal District Court in Ohio and alleges the company “artificially inflated” stock prices through misleading public information designed to conceal the true nature of Diebold’s financial and legal situation. The defendants are also alleged to have attempted to disguise well-known and ongoing problems with Diebold’s Voting Machine equipment and software. Additionally, the suit alleges insider trading by defendants resulting in proceeds of $2.7 million. Remedies are sought under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
The suit, filed by the law firm Scott+Scott, LLC on behalf of Konkol and the plaintiff class, names former Diebold CEO and Chairman, Walden O’Dell as a co-defendant along with seven other current and former officers of the once-venerable company.
News of the pending litigation was first reported as imminent in an exclusive report by The BRAD BLOG late last week.
Yesterday, in a surprise announcement, O’Dell unexpectedly resigned from the company. A Diebold press release described O’Dell as leaving the company for “personal reasons”. He was immediately replaced by the company’s president and chief operating officer, Thomas W. Swidarski, who had directly overseen Diebold’s Election Systems subsidiary division for some time. Swidarski is also named as a co-defendant in today’s class action suit.
After news was released of weaker-than-expected third-quarter earnings on September 21, Diebold stock prices plummeted 15.5% in unusually heavy trading that resulted in a one day sell-off costing investors more than $40 million dollars. The complaint describes Diebold and the co-defendants as having “failed to disclose adverse facts known” to the company and that they “participated in a fraudulent scheme and course of business that operated as a fraud.”
The suit, to be released in full by The BRAD BLOG shortly, (UPDATE: Full suit now available for download here) alleges Diebold and the eight co-defendants failed to alert investors to adverse facts known to the company, choosing instead to participate in a “fraudulent scheme and course of business” that operated as a fraud or deceit on the company’s shareholders.
The suit describes the liabilities of the company and co-defendants as follows…
…THE DEFENDANTS…
Named as co-defendants in the suit along with former CEO O’Dell and new CEO Swidarski are President of International Operations, Michael J. Hillock; Senior Vice President of Customer Solutions, David Bucci; Interim Chief Financial Officer, Principal Accounting Officer and Controller, Kevin J. Krakora; Vice President and Chief Information Officer, John M. Crowther; Senior Vice President and CFO, Gregory T. Geswein; and President and COO, Eric C. Evans. (Titles applied to the named co-defendants during the class period. Evans, for example resigned from the company on the same day as the Sep. 21, 2005 announcement.) “Each individual defendant,” the suit points out, “owed a duty to the Company and its shareholders not to trade on inside information.”
The claim cites a number of allegedly misleading news releases pertaining to the fitness and security of election systems as contracted by Diebold in San Diego County in 2003; their settlement for $2.6 million with the state of California in 2004, wherein Diebold is alleged to have concealed “the dimensions and scope of internal problems at the Company” from investors; and an “astonishingly low and incredibly inaccurate” statement about “restructuring charges” in the Sep. 21 announcement.
Once again, quoting from the lawsuit:
(a) the Company remained unable to assure the quality and working order of their voting machine products;
(b) the Company lacked a credible state of internal controls and corporate compliance;
(c) the 2004 settlement with the State of California served to conceal from investors the dimensions and scope of internal problems at the Company, impacting product quality, strategic planning, forecasting, guidance, internal controls and corporate compliance; and
(d) the Company’s “prediction” of astonishingly low and incredibly inaccurate restructuring charges for the entire 2005 fiscal year grossly understated the true costs defendants faced to restructure the Company.
The complaint alleges that the company lied to investors about the true costs of its restructuring activities, concealing the fact that Diebold was facing far worse restructuring issues than publicly represented — indicative of far greater problems than the company was willing to reveal.
For example, the complaint indicates that the problems Diebold faced in California in 2004 were merely the tip of an internal structural iceberg which the company had sought to conceal from investors when they decided to make a settlement in the case. Investors could not know then that the problems revealed by the California litigation in 2004 were a sign of more and deeper internal problems to come. The settlement agreed to by Diebold in that case, the suit alleges, was meant to keep a lid on the larger dimensions of the problems, rather than indicating that the issues at stake had been fully resolved. Press materials released by the company announcing the settlement — and included in the version of the complaint filed today — seem to indicate otherwise to investors.
…THE INSIDER…
Additional facets of the company’s internal structural problems were revealed in a series of previous BRAD BLOG articles reporting on an anonymous company insider we dubbed “DIEB-THROAT” who alerted us to the “Cyber Alert Warning” issued by a branch of the Dept. of Homeland Security in August of 2004. That warning concerned the vulnerability to hackers of Diebold’s central vote tabulating software prior to last year’s Presidential Election. The election watchdog organization BlackBoxVoting.org, who had first discovered the vulnerability, had also recently arranged for a computer security expert to successfully hack into actual Diebold voting machines used in Leon County, Florida without leaving any trace of the manipulation.
It was just several days after our first report on DIEB-THROAT that stock prices plunged at the company in September. Diebold attempted to blame their troubles, at the time, on bad weather in the gulf which lead our insider source to aver: “Using Hurricane Katrina is a poor excuse for bad products – the last time this kind of deception occurred it was called Enron.”
Internet news site, The RAW STORY recently ran their own interview with DIEB-THROAT revealing still more structural problems within the company and its voting division. The report explained that the company was “plagued by technical woes,” even as a Diebold spokesperson claimed the 144-year old company “has a sterling reputation in the industry.”
…THE PLAINTIFF…
Plaintiff Konkol, a just-retired 29-year public school employee from Central Wisconsin first invested in Diebold in 1999. She told The BRAD BLOG that she purchased the stock thinking, “ATM’s that’d be the way to go.” She originally invested $500 which eventually grew to $1400 before falling. She is also invested in Diebold via mutual funds held by the Wisconsin Education Union in which she is a member. Konkol, a 56-year old grandmother of three, recently returned from two weeks of volunteering on the Gulf Coast with several members of her Lutheran church. “We got a big group together and we went down to the Gulf to help out in Katrina.”
“I believe in churches…I believe we should practice what we’re preached to about,” she told us. “I don’t like it when big companies take advantage of us little people,” she said. “I can’t say that I’m anti-big business…I just want things to be fair.”
It appears that Scott+Scott, the attorneys associated with the case, are just beginning to learn about the full scope of the fraud allegedly perpetrated by Diebold on investors. Amended complaints with additional details are expected to be filed in the weeks and months to come. Other law firms are also expected to file similar suits which will eventually be consolidated by the Federal District Court hearing the case. Indeed The BRAD BLOG has been contacted since filing our original report on this last week, by other firms who are said to be pursuing similar litigation against Diebold.
…THE REFORMERS…
As one of America’s largest Voting Machine Companies (along with ES&S, they account for the tabulation of more than 80% of America’s votes every election) Diebold has been the target of Election Reform advocates for their strong partisan support of Republican causes and candidates, a statement made prior to last year’s Presidential Election to Republican fundraisers by O’Dell that he was committed to “delivering the state of Ohio” to George W. Bush, along with their reluctance to include verifiable paper ballots with their voting products and to make the source-code for their software open and available for public inspection.
A recent 100+ page GAO report, shamefully unreported by the mainstream media, confirmed many of the Election Reform advocates concerns about the security and vulnerability of Voting Equipment made by Diebold and other such companies. In California, a recent mock election test revealed that some 20% of Diebold touch-screen voting machines failed to operate as expected after being previous decertified for similar failures and vulnerabilities. Despite that, California’s Republican Sec. of State Bruce McPherson remarkably is considering re-certifying those same machines in the state which Diebold has described as America’s “largest voting market.”
Diebold was one of seven major American Voting Machine companies named in Velvet Revolution’s “Divestiture for Democracy” campaign launched on Presidents’ Day last February. The campaign demanded accountability and openness by the Voting Machine Companies in what Velvet Revolution deemed a “patriotic duty” to “ensure free, fair and transparent elections” by the private companies entrusted with running our sacred public democracy. The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VelvetRevolution.us.
Konkol’s complaint as filed today demands “a trial by jury.”
The BRAD BLOG will of course, compile an extensive, accurate and verifiable paper trail in regards to this story as it continues to unfold…
UPDATE: Scott+Scott, LLC releases news of the case filing in a press release here…
FURTHER UPDATE: Reuters picks up the story. Unable to get comment from Diebold.
UPDATE 12/14/05: A full copy of the complaint is now available for download here
May they go down in flames!
Help press the MSM on this one – needs to be front page news.
Just Wow, Hopefully now, people will scrutinize all those voting irregularites in the Diebold machines.
Well alrighty then.
Sadly, as RLM said, this action is about loosing money,
not morals. From the stockholders point of view.
But hey! This will put a spotlight on election crap.
Great! Maybe such a dark cloud can be cast by this scandal around all electronic voting such that the voting methods and procedures for next election will radically changed.
GREAT, GREAT WORK, BRAD!
This is only the beginning. My original estimate that George w. would be out by the end of this year, looks like it may be a little bit off. But, I must say, people like you have made the first year of his second term MISERABLE!!!!
Let’s all get on board and press the REPUBLICANS to impeach the worst president ever. All they need is a nudge now, that being that they will go down in flames in 2006 if they do not move forward on impeachment.
Time to end the Republican Neocon party.
I’m back in.
Looks like a neo-con at an ACLU convention,
doen’t it RLM
WHERE’S THE CAUSE OF ACTION FOR RIGGING THE VOTE?
99,
A ship is sunk one shot at a time
be patient my friend
In a case like this there has to be disclosure of internal Diebold information. That could crack wide open the gates of voting Hell. Information such as source code to the voting machines or internal e-mails and memos could all reveal the Enron-ish kind of corporate environment we’re dealing with.
Sunlight to reveal everything and a tv camera to broadcast it to the world…Yep, that would be good.
I would advise folks here not to get their hopes up.
Securities fraud cases are a dime a dozen.
Practically every big corporation in the U.S. has faced one or more of these actions.
It would be nice if this took Diebold down, but it isn’t going to happen.
MarkH re: #9 – That’s exactly what I was thinking.
In a lawsuit, "discovery" is a wonderful thang!
Now, if only Blackwell winds up being drawn into this, I’ll be a campy happer!!
*bfg*
Congratulations to Brad and the 6 or 7 for keeping this issue alive, and to Winter Patriot’s Whispering Campaign for making it easier for us to push it into the public eye. I musta left a hundred printouts on election fraud laying around in public by now, in a handful of states.
I’m not chilling the champagne yet, but I’m thinking it’s almost time to go buy it!
MORE BREAKING DIEBOLD NEWS!
This will add to Diebold corporate woes. . .
Breaking:
Due to security design issues and contractual non-performance, Leon County supervisor of elections Ion Sancho told Black Box Voting that he will never use Diebold in an election again. He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from the county. He will issue a formal announcement to this effect shortly.
Finnish security expert Harri Hursti proved that Diebold lied to Secretaries of State across the nation when Diebold claimed votes could not be changed on the memory card.
A test election was run in Leon County today with a total of eight ballots – six ballots voted "no" on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thomson and by Harri Hursti voted "yes" indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked.
–To read the rest of the story use the link below:
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bi...5096#POST15096
is this not a bigger issue than securities fraud? what am i missing?
Here’s the whole story–just spotted the permission to reprint:
Breaking:
Due to security design issues and contractual non-performance, Leon County supervisor of elections Ion Sancho told Black Box Voting that he will never use Diebold in an election again. He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from the county. He will issue a formal announcement to this effect shortly.
Finnish security expert Harri Hursti proved that Diebold lied to Secretaries of State across the nation when Diebold claimed votes could not be changed on the memory card.
A test election was run in Leon County today with a total of eight ballots – six ballots voted "no" on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thomson and by Harri Hursti voted "yes" indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked.
At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A "zero report" was run indicating zero votes on the memory card. In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes.
The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied "ender card" was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine.
Correct results should have been:
Yes:2 No:6
However the results tape read:
Yes:7 No:1
The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into the GEMS central tabulator. The central tabulator is the "mothership" that pulls in all votes from voting machines. The results in the central tabulator read:
Yes:7 No:1
This proves that the votes themselves were changed in a one-step process that would not be detected in any normal canvassing procedure – using only a credit-card sized memory card.
Diebold Elections Systems head of research and development Pat Green specifically told the Cuyahoga County board of elections that votes could not be changed on the memory card.
According to Public Records responses obtained by Black Box Voting in response to our requests shows that Diebold promulgated this misrepresentation to as many as 800 state and local elections officials.
Permission to reprint granted with link to http://blackboxvoting.org
Sincerelyours #13
It all adds up, the stories reinforce one another.
The news from Florida will surely support the investors’ lawsuit. And who knows what other fallout will come from the latest bombshell from Ion Sancho?!
Sancho is a real hero among election officials. Maybe this will give other election officials the moral courage to carry out the same simple test. It proves just how simple it is to manipulate an election, and to "fix" the central tabulator results too so that they agree–all in one easy step. And it shows that Diebold lied about it.
Boy is Diebold in trouble.
i’m just a dumb old american who doesn’t follow the details of this issue like most of you, but this is getting amazingly interesting. i’m really grateful to those of you in our backyard digging up the dirt… your back muscles must be getting very strong……
It’s like a one-two punch.
Surely the media will find this combination hard to ignore. We’ll have to make sure everyone knows about these two stories.
If the media ignores this, it can only mean a couple of things, VOTING IS RIGGED, AND THE MEDIA IS IN ON IT
"If the media ignores this, it can only mean a couple of things, VOTING IS RIGGED, AND THE MEDIA IS IN ON IT"
You got that right…anyone with common sense can now plainly see how easily-rigged ANY election can be. WTF???
Am I right to say that Diebold isn’t the only manufacturer of this type of equipment? Without looking it up (long day, tired!) I want to say yes, and if that’s the case, then this litigation should encourage a second look at them as well.
And anyone caught participating in any scamming of the American vote should be considered a traitor to their people, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
And that law better involve some serious punishment.
Corporate entities owning stakes in the election process need to be stopped. NOW, TODAY. This story shows exactly why that is.
If "big media" is complicit with "current government", then We The People are going to have to take matters into their own hands. WHO ELSE is going to do this?
It’s real simple: when you don’t have a vote, you have no voice. You have no say-so. You have nothing, in terms of any further sort of meaningful "national identity" whatsoever.
Think about it. What becomes of you then, if your voice no longer matters AT ALL, in this Republic? Because the minute your vote cannot be verified, then that’s exactly what it means–YOU HAVE NOTHING.
I’m starting to think the only thing the current lot of old greedy buzzards in charge are going to understand is something that hits ’em right square in their bank accounts.
What say we throw a big, bad, good old-fashioned general strike. Or two. Or ten. Or fifty? Screw these complete and total fascist jagoffs, I want my country back. There’s lots of ways to do this, but people have to be willing to put themselves on the line for it.
Otherwise, we deserve whatever we get.
Agent 99 is right that this case provides no causus belli for vote rigging. But for those of us who have been waiting for a chance to debate the 2004 election on a level playing field, it’s nirvana.
Sometimes good things happen for the wrong reason. People lost money in Diebold stock, so they got pissed off and sued over false statements made in defense of Diebold’s voting machines. It’s possible, in theory, that the alleged false statements had nothing to do with the election. But now the burden of proof will be on Diebold to show that, instead of the burden being on "conspiracy theorists" to prove fraud.
Who wants to book bets that Diebold can defend itself against the charges without vote rigging and the election being front and center as evidentiary issues? And who wants to guess whether the company will allow the case to go to court, knowing that CNN and the New York Times will be facing the issue at long last?
I hope Diebold fights it all the way. I suspect they’ll settle, and try to finesse the inference that their machines can’t be trusted. Either way, they lose in the long run.
Abramoff and DeLay should have poured in more of the Pentagon money their buddies’ front companies stole to keep up the value of Diebold stock. Then there wouldn’t have been a lawsuit. I mean, the Pentagon admitted it lost track of a trillion dollars. How much evil can that buy?
somebody cue the music to "ding dong the witch is dead"……
may the ghost of Andy Stephenson haunt forever the rotting carcasses of Diebold executives as they sit in jail when they are found guilty of all the crimes they have committed!! now can we see the same class action suit brought against Doug Curling and other execs of Choicepoint also under SEC investigation?
Brad Friedman’s singleminded activism and support from courageous Diebold insider’s & passionate election activists should receive a great big thanks from the rest of America for saving some piece of our fragile and crumbling democcracy…
😎 😎 :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
:angry: Nothing about this on mainstream media so far. I guess the general public can’t handle it, they’d be too upset and revolt or something.
This Dude Looks Shifty
RLM does "discovery"occur in Fraud cases?
What would the "limits" be?
Could staff be called as witnesses?
EVERYBODY would be "under oath" ,yes?
Why no MSM talk of this news?! Where is the media?
I want my country back! :angry:
Walden O’Dell was awarded Keith O’s worst person award tonight! Well, actually O’Reilly got bottom billing again and O’Dell was runner up.
Thanks Keith!
Let’s hope more MSM pick up on it.
Good work Brad and VelvetRevolution, glad someone is doing it. But what everyone seems to be missing is that now the discovery starts and all the documents we have been wanting will have to be turned over to the attorneys and all the people who know the dirt will be given depositions. And if I am reading this right, Dieb-Throat will be telling the attorneys where all the bodies are buried. And of course, now the SEC may get involved and let’s see who starts snitching first. This is the beginning of the end for Diebold.
Where is the MSM? Either in front of a Fitzpatrick grand jury, or lobbing softballs at the white house. What a bunch of jack-offs.
"Who wants to book bets that Diebold can defend itself against the charges without vote rigging and the election being front and center as evidentiary issues?"
If the American mainstream media knows anything about this, and cannot report it, you can damn sure bet that Diebold will be able to make this go away, period. And they’ll have help.
It’s sickening, but the reason everyone in power will fall over themselves to keep things hushed up has got to be BECAUSE of vote-rigging. Why else would it need to be so deeply hidden?
If you don’t start seeing this on the CNNs and the FOX News feeds soon, you guys better consider this a wake-up call to get serious about taking your country back by any means necessary. Whoever said that earlier was right. If you don’t have a verifiable vote, you don’t really have a voice. And if you no longer have a voice, then what does it really mean to be "American"? If the vote can be rigged so easily, then why would anyone currently in office care what YOU think?
If you let it happen, you’ve no one to blame but yourselves. Other countries aren’t going to come to your rescue, because your government has pissed too many of them off with their arrogant meddling and war-mongering. WAKE UP!
Diebold won’t be making anything go away, this is when the snitches come out and start shouting 90 different directions where all the election fraud has taken place……..
This will get much worse….Demand NBC & others cover this!!!! Do your strongest action to get this issue fully covered in the press
hardball@msnbc.com , cnnpresents@cnn.com , dateline@nbc.com
Lets get rid of these sons of guns!!!!! Every last one of them, THE DIVESTITURE FOR DEMOCRACY IS WORKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Doug E.
How come the SEC isn’t filing these charges on behalf of this person and all other share-holders?
Could be because the SEC is bogged down in litigation regarding Bill Frist, Kennedy, & numerous others who may have engaged in illegal insider trading…the SEC still isn’t done with its investigation of the Clintons or ENRON’s Ken Lay. They don’t have millions of investigators on standby, you see!
But someone needs to…..IRS & whomever else, so we can tear down this fake gov once and for all..
Doug E
For MMIIXX: I’m not a lawyer. But my understanding is that normal discovery would be part of the process if the case isn’t settled, and that all depositions would be legal documents carrying the threat of perjury if falsified.
The huge majority of these cases are settled for pennies on the dollar (after the law firm gets its full cut, something like 1/3, which I this is exorbitant). I think Diebold will settle, because whatever it costs them can be sold to their stockholders as a one time charge against earnings accompanied by the usual brave talk ("Let’s put this behind us and move on," yada yada yada).
The true cost of any settlement, of course, would be the damage to the company’s credibility and the likelihood that states would decertify their machines en masse (any state not doing so would face its own lawsuits). Still, my hunch is that Diebold will prefer that to having all its electoral skeletons released from the closet for the media.
Diebold execs will probably be defiant like another pal of the president, Ken Lay.
He is going to trial soon, and still issues tirades against all of this with "righteous indignation" (link here).
Here is a man who presided over the destruction of the savings and hopes of employees faithful to Enron is a big way. Yet Lay presided over the destruction of their future hopes.
And Lay, like Diebold officials named, only have contempt for the process that calls them onto the carpet.
Meanwhile with friends like this the admin dips again in the polls (link here).
This case made me wonder why the neoCons are pressing so hard for a renewed "Patriot" act. I think I have a workable hypothesis.
The patriot act is being used by corporations friendly to the administration to spy on other corporations not friendly to the administration (link here).
Keep the pressure on your senators to filibuster the renewing of the patriot act. It will stop the flood of spying on good citizens.
For the second consecutive day The New York Times has made no mention of O’Dell’s resignation or the pending class-action suit against Diebold. Not even in the business section, although Diebold is a Fortune 500 company and any suit against it should be newsworthy, whether it has an political ramifications or not.
This is censorship, pure and simple. The Times just doesn’t want to "go there." There’s no way to simply report the resignation without mentioning the election fraud accusations and the temporary decertification of Diebold’s machines by two states, because that would be like discussing prisoner interrogations without citing accusations of torture.
Meanwhile Diebold’s stock rallied over two points yesterday in the absence of public news. Anyone want to bet there isn’t a connection between the media’s refusal to cover the story and the stock’s upturn? You know, "What they don’t know won’t hurt them."
This is really, really, sick. I’m starting to wonder if open revolution against the establishment isn’t the only answer…including civil disobedience.
Wow, an early Xmas present!
I sure hope Santa brings that executive impeachment, I don’t have a chimney. He can leave it on the front porch.
RLM #39
I am with you on all of that. I am wondering if the president’s speech content is having an effect? I mean on the MSM presstitutes. They need a boost.
The president is pushing democracy in Iraq in his latest moves to reverse the diminishing appreciation the American people have for neoCons. That includes Diebold and the MSM.
This effort the president is presenting is being done via his speeches around the nation.
He is saying that Iraq will be the first democracy in the area. WHAT?
He is forgetting that Isreal is a democracy. And that it has been there for a long time.
The big point he is attaching to the significance of the Iraqi democracy, is that "democracies bring peace".
Is it any wonder, then, why he is leaving out the democracy of Israel in the premise that democracy axiomatically brings peace to the region?
After all isn’t it the democracy of Israel that is at the heart of much of the friction in the region?
And isn’t Israel planning an attack on Iran, another democracy in the region? Having a democracy there, then, is not an ipso facto source of peace.
And isn’t the only current war in the middle east a situation where a democracy (US) invaded a non-democracy (Iraq) and now occupies it "so it will become a democracy and therefore become more peaceful"?
I fear the president is doing significant damage to the notion of democracy with his idle banter, and I hope the MSM will point out these inconsistencies.
But if they don’t print stories that expose Diebold and therefore election integrity, why should they print what they would consider an expose on the pablum that they feel they need after having embedded and wedded themselves to propaganda?
MSM coverage! The most popular night radio show in the country, Coast to Coast AM, (second most popular overall, after Limbaugh), spent an entire hour on the Diebold situation last night, with Bev Harris as guest. I suggest you go to the website and check out its blurb about the show:
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/
Also, send an e-mail of thanks to George Noory, the host, for showing some balls. And for giving mention to the Dieb-throat disclosures!
Listen, this program has 5-10 million listeners every night. This is better than the front page of the fucking NYT.
Read an open letter to Howard Dean questioning where the DNC is on the voting issue.
http://crisispapers.org/essays-p/dean.htm
Good news, Unirealist. I will e-mail George Noory right away.
Yesterday I sent an e-mail to Byron Calame, the public editor (reader’s ombudsman) of the Times, complaining about the lack of Diebold/O’Dell coverage. His associate replied that he’d forwarded my message to the business editor.
Better than nothing. But it shows that Calame’s office is clueless about the wider implications of this story. He should have forwarded my e-mail to the news editor as well. Maybe "clueless" isn’t quite right; "disingenuous" is probably better.
The MSM is not interested. See blog
http://www.sendthelesbianstocanada.com
I broke the Leon County news story yesterday morning! I spoke with Ion Sancho on Monday evening after calling the Tallahassee Democrat for their reaction to the CEO resignation. The news editor not only felt it was not significant, she argued with me and began to raise her voice. I let Bill Cotterell know about this, he is the political editor, and no response. I am not a journalist or a writer, just one really pissed off citizen tired of my Constitutional rights being eroded.
The MSM doesn’t seem to care about real news any more. They want it spoon fed from the spin doctors because ther don’t want their Holiday party invitations rescinded. That is why we need the internet and sites like this one. It is a powerful tool to use for protecting the REAL American Democracy.
… Somebody send it to " TDS " – just THINK of what Stewart & Co. could DO with this ! Yikes , Hooray , and Happy Holidays ( ’cause I include everyone ) ! … 😉
MSM may not know how to categorize a story like this, because it is half political and half business. Also, lawsuits get filed all the time; in and of itself, just the filing of a suit doesn’t mean anything. Judgments and trials get the coverage.
BUT– look to see if Diebold tries to change venue. Judge Economus is an old- fashioned, Youngstown Democrat appointed by Clinton, and this won’t sit well down there in Canton.
Good Job again, Brad!!!
Diebold is going to be exposed even more… Now how to get major media to cover it well, especially going into the next elections
Any new developments regarding the Clint Curtis case? I talked directly with him a couple of months ago but basicly you covered everything we talked in your earlier reports, so i had nothing new to write about…
Best of all to you,
ilyana
For not-so-rich: If a story is half political and half business, it should appear in both the main news section and business section. If it’s important, that is.
For the third day since since the news broke, The New York Times (most influential paper in the world) ignored the Diebold case altogether. There’s zero possibility they’re not aware of it. If another Fortune 500 C.E.O. resigned for "personal reasons," even absent any suspected political connection, it would be duly noted in the business section at least.
The Times knows it can’t cover the story halfway, by simply citing O’Dell’s resignation, because too many readers know about his pledge to do all he could to assure Bush’s re-election. Mentioning his departure without reporting the class-action suit would be worse than saying nothing…sort of like saying Judith Miller resigned for "personal reasons" without talking about WMD and Valerie Plame.
So the Times plays ostrich and hopes the problem will go away. Nope. The class-action suit has been filed. It’s now up to Diebold to either fight it in court (with every paper in the country except the Times on hand?) or settle it, which will be tantamount to admitting its machines are hackable…and opening up the 2004 election to media scrutiny once and for all.
Diebold reminds me of an old saying, "You can fool ALL the people some of the time, and SOME of the people all the time, – but you can’t fool All the people ALL the time". Diebold has finally hit this last brick wall I would say. I recently went to Diebold’s website and read the CEO’s letter to Activists. They sure sound sweet and sincere – that they are above board and pure as the driven snow. I’ve often wondered what would happen to Diebold’s bottom line if their ATM machines were as crappy as their voting machines. I had far rather my vote be as accurate as their ATM’s. I can sue the bank if they take my money (I have a receipt) but I have no recouse on getting my vote back. Write Diebold directly and let them know we are not taking their crap anymore. Furthermore, we all need to inundate AARP to get this story out that Diebold is parking the fox in the henhouse. You want to get some people pissed – let the seniors know they are being yanked around by vote theft. We have to do it folks, – no one else will. Diebold is on the ropes with this one. A few more jabs to the mid-section will send a loud message to the next runner up in the voter vending business that they better lay hands off to our votes – or they will be next. We have to stay on this one…
For Dave and Everyone: It strikes me that Diebold is in the same position vis a vis elections as gun manufacturers are versus violent crime. As far as I know, no Diebold employee has ever actually committed an act of election fraud…thus, the company can say, "We’re pure as driven snow" and be technically correct.
But they know the machines are vulnerable, and that bad people will use them for evil doings, just the same as Colt and Remington know bad people will inevitably use their guns to kill other people. In the case of Diebold, the company is domiciled in a state where crooked Republicans are as common as squirrels…and willing to do anything to win an election, so the company’s position is analogous to a gun manufacturer selling gunsfreely in a crime-ridden neighborhood of a major American city.
That would be negligence, wouldn’t it? If not criminal negligence, at least worthy of civil action. Maybe our lawyer friends can work up a legal case against Diebold for KNOWINGLY MAKING HACKABLE MACHINES AVAILABLE TO PEOPLE WHO COULD COMMIT ELECTORAL CRIMES WITH THEM.
For an interesting addition to this Diebold debacle, try a google search on ‘Chuck Hagel voting machines’ and read about a little voter fraud in Nebraska, and how Republican Senator Hagel and Diebold evolved together. Makes this Nebraskan feel shame for that Vietnam Vet.
Did you know that current employees at Diebold have not even been informed of the current litigation. You’d think after 2.7 mil they’d at least have the professional courtesy of a reach around?
Did you know that current employees at Diebold have not even been informed of the current litigation. You’d think after 2.7 mil they’d at least have the professional courtesy of a reach around?
:crazy: WOW the poloticians could really have a field day with this…the problem with voting is technology, can’t they just have people voice there opinions! well holla back!
Keep it coming Brad! Bring it on!!
that’s the best news i’ve heard all day!