Saturday, July 16, 2005
How they do business in Ohio.
The Columbus Dispatch has an interesting story about Diebold business ethics in Ohio.
A contractor who represents Diebold Election Systems arrived at the office of Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matthew Damschroder with an open checkbook on the same day the county was opening bids for voter-registration software.But this is the small stuff, it gets better.
Pasquale "Pat" Gallina arrived unannounced, Damschroder said.
"I’m here to give you $10,000," the elections director recalls Gallina saying. "Who do I make it payable to?"
"Well, you’re certainly not going to make it out to me," Damschroder says he told Gallina. "But I’m sure the Franklin County Republican Party would appreciate a donation."
In May, he said, Gallina called him and bragged about a $50,000 check he had written to Blackwell’s "political interests."I guess this is how a free market economy works.
"Isn’t it great that Diebold and the county are going to do business?" he says Gallina asked him.
Damschroder said Gallina went on to tell him that he had met with Norm Cummings, a Blackwell campaign consultant, in Washington, D.C., to work out a deal: Diebold would cut the price of its electronic voting machines to $2,700 each if the company had a guarantee that it would receive all of the state’s business.
"Then Gallina tells me that he then wrote a check for $50,000 to Blackwell’s political interests."
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