Edwards Wants Bush to Return Donations

by WILL LESTER, AP
December 6th, 2003

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is calling on President Bush to return more than $100,000 donated to his campaign by a major manufacturer of voting machines, saying the relationship could damage confidence in elections.

Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, criticized the contributions by Walden O'Dell, head of Diebold Election Systems in a speech prepared for delivery Saturday to Florida Democrats at their annual meeting in Lake Buena Vista.

And he took a swipe at the touch screen voting machines made by Diebold, which some computer experts have questioned as lacking adequate security. Diebold officials have defended the security of their voting machines.

"We now have touch screen voting machines that some people think are just as bad as a butterfly ballot," Edwards said, referring to the confusing ballots that became notorious in the botched Florida election in 2000.

"What makes this worse is that one of George W. Bush's fund-raising Pioneers said he wanted to help Ohio 'deliver' its electoral votes to George Bush," Edwards said.

Edwards said that "people who make voting machines need to be real careful when they talk about delivering elections."

According to the New York Times, O'Dell wrote a letter to Republican contributors in August that said "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

Terry Holt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign said he had no comment on Edwards' remarks.

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