Wednesday, February 08, 2006

"Diebold May Be Getting Out of Election Business"

As we pointed out in our story on Diebold yesterday, AP ran a short piece including an interview with new CEO Tom Swidarski revealing indications that he seems to be looking to unload the beleaguered Diebold Elections Division as part of his $100 million "restructuring plan" as recently promised to share holders.

Shortly after our post about that article, AP reissued the same article, but with an additional quote from Swidarski, a bit more background on Diebold's many woes (former CEO Walden O'Dell's promise to deliver the state of Ohio to Bush, etc.) and a new headline: "Diebold chief says fate of e-voting unit under review".

Looks like they changed their lede after they realized what Swidarski was actually signaling in his comments, which -- in the new piece -- also includes these two quotes:
 
Well, we can all hope. But I wouldn't count on it. They may just change their name and pop up somewhere else.
 
At any rate, e-voting has got to go, until there is a Rove-proof voting machine. I will not consider that any of my votes count until there is a verifiable system, which tends to make me very irritable.

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