“The counting of votes is a public trust. Diebold, whose machines count many votes, has never acted as if it understood this.”<\/p>\n
So writes the NY Times<\/i> correctly in a very good Op\/Ed<\/a> in today’s Sunday paper. The piece smartly summarizes the bad week for Diebold and their years-long failure to understand the importance of the role they have been entrusted with in participating in our public<\/i> elections process. We appreciate the coverage, if only because the paper’s news division didn’t devote any<\/i> ink, as far as we know, to Diebold’s growing troubles all week long.<\/p>\n Though elsewhere in the paper, on Saturday, Dan Mitchell embarrassed both himself and the once-great Grey Lady by announcing a “New Day for Diebold”<\/a> along with further pimping the company’s now-discredited PR attempts to marginalize those of us who give a damn about an accountable democracy in America. Mitchell reports very briefly in the technology section on the dumping of CEO Walden O’Dell<\/a> last Monday in order to suggest this could be “the beginning of an interesting turnaround story” for Diebold. No mentions of the Securities Fraud Class Action<\/a> against them, nor the devasting hack<\/a> of their Voting Equipment later in the week. But Mitchell does use the opportunity to knee-jerk about both “conspiracy theories” and “black-helicopter theorizing.”<\/p>\n In the best case, we’ll suggest Mitchell suffers from either incomptence or sheer laziness. In a not so generous speculation, we’d wonder if he’s taking the opportunity to attempt to boost the sagging stock price of DBD<\/a>. Hey Dan, you’d tell us if you happened to own any Diebold shares, right?<\/p>\n