March 8th, 2008 – DuPage County, IL

Electronic voting machines manufactured by Diebold (now Premier Elections Solutions) proved how much easier voting can be in the digital age. In Illinois, in the special election held to replace Dennis Hastert electronic voting machines did voters the courtesy of telling them how they should vote.

Diebold electronic voting machines in DuPage county aided voters in their decision by displaying the word “Republican” on the screen. The screen on which the word was displayed is the actual touch-screen that voters use to make their selections, which was a tremendous time-saver. It saved many voters uncounted seconds, because it allowed them to be told how to vote and to cast that vote without moving their eyes more than a few inches.

In at least one precinct, elections judges placed masking tape over the word “Republican” that appeared on the screen of the Diebold-manufactured electronic voting machines, presumably because they thought that voting had been made too easy by the labor-saving devices that Diebold had hard-coded into the electronic voting machines. The judges likely thought that having the electronic voting machines tell voters which party they should vote for took all the fun out of election day.

The non-partisan Illinois Ballot Integrity Project is concerned that having electronic voting machines displaying the word “Republican” on the same screen that voters use to cast their ballots might influence the outcome of the election. Of course it will. It will make the election easier. The electronic voting machines are designed to make voting easier – just like all machines are designed to make something easier. But IBIP doesn’t want easy elections. They want, “to inform and educate the public, media and government officials about important election-integrity issues and to promote the adoption of legislation and policies designed to secure the democratic process.”

Making the disastrous ritualized façade we call voting resemble democratic processes in any way would take enormous amounts of legislation and policies. That is not easy. That is a pain in the ass.

Diebold just wants to make things easy on us. Fortunately for lazy voters everywhere, Diebold and DuPage County Board of Elections know some slimy sleaze mongers that are using Turd Blossom Rove’s despicable tactics destroy the non-partisan IBIP. Soon, the citizen’s-action organization will be widely considered a sub-division of the Democratic Party and their interference in easy elections will be dismissible as partisan rhetoric.

Diebold did not care to comment, but we made something up anyway. “The judges shouldn’t have put tape on the touch screen voting machines,” a pretend Diebold representative commented. “It can leave gunk, and you have to get a special solvent to get it off.”

Despite early indications that easy-voting was going to be successful in Illinois, the Democratic candidate, Bill Foster won the election.

Wally came into this world in 1945. Little is known (by me) of how it happened. I assume he was hatched from an errant spore or left in a basket somewhere. He was most likely of modest beginnings, but worked tremendously hard to get both of his electrical engineering degrees and his MBA. Then he got really rich making voting machines.

After he got rich, he started thinking like a rich guy, so he became really active in the Republican Party. They loved him. His name was Wally and he made voting machines. Republicans love nicknames and closed source election tallying software coupled to touch-screen machines that leave no paper trail. Everybody knows that.

Wally was on a roll. He could do no wrong (for the Republican Party). The catastrophe of the 2000 election was about to prompt some serious motions in committees all over Washington. Those motions were going to make it through their committees, on to the floor and into the giant safe in the basement of the White House where we keep all of our laws.

Those laws would then tell us all that we had to use some Diebold election screeny thing instead of the punchy paper whatchamabobs the next time we voted . (At least some of us would. Some of us would be using similar touchy screen things made by ES&S. They, too, have a really interesting story. But, I seem to have wandered off-course a little…)

Diebold was Wally’s company! He was in the freekin’ money. Everyone was high fivin’ him, all the time. That was really awkward. You know how square old rich white guys high five, right? Awkward. But, he was poised to make some serious loot. He was thinking, “man, it sure has been great exploiting my partisan connections to land giant government contracts for which my really cool and tremendously rich company will manufacture substandard equipment with little accountability or security, but for which I shall get mega paid.” That was unusual for Wally. Thinking. Thinking was unusual for Wally. At least I have to assume it was. I know very little about the inner workings of Wally’s mind. As such, I will work from the premise that it functions exactly like mine, and that is how I would have reacted to a giant government contract to make crappy voting machines for huge loot and to get to choose the next President.

So, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 made Wally a player. He felt he owed the government something back. He had a great idea – which he wrote down – in an invitation to a 2003 Bush/Cheney fundraiser he was having at his crib (which, if it had ever made it to “Cribs” would have put all the other cribs to shame).

Since I’ve been coloring up the story a little (Walden O’Dell is really tremendously boring in real life – and, he’s really really really bald – and kind of fat – and probably evil), I will continue to do so by suggesting that the invite asked guests to indicate on their RSVPs whether they preferred plain bologna or hoagie-style sandwiches. It promised there would be an electric bull (at least it would have been cool if it would have). Oh, and it also promised to deliver Ohio’s electoral votes to Bush in 2004. That last part is for sure. It did promise Ohio’s electoral votes. I’m less sure about the electric bull and the hoagies. In fact, I’m pretty sure the only one of those things the invitation written by Walden O’Dell on August 14th, 2003 promised was to deliver Ohio’s electoral votes to George W. Bush.

Deliver them he did.

Oops. A year after he delivered Ohio’s electoral votes to George W. Bush, Walden O’Dell resigned from Diebold, because he had been caught dipping his scrotum into random Tupperware containers in the fridge in the breakroom. Actually, that is not at all why he resigned. WALDEN O’DELL NEVER TOOK HIS SCROTUM OUT OF HIS PANTS AT WORK. He was too busy delivering Ohio’s electoral votes to George W. Bush.

Wally resigned amid massive insider trading allegations and the discovery of his giant collection of ‘inter-generational’ pornography. He was really into old dudes. I know, pretty crazy right? Right. That is crazy. If he were in to ‘inter-generational’ porn, he would have gone the other way. WALDEN O’DELL DID NOT GET CAUGHT WITH ANY PORNOGRAPHY OF ANY KIND. He just resigned because of the insider trading stuff.

I personally wish he had held on to his position as CEO and then died in a shootout when they came to take him away.

Unfortunately, Walden O’Dell is still alive.

Read More about Wally O’Dell:
At CommonDreams.org
At NNDB
At Brad Blog