The company Diebold Inc. is a leading American manufacturer of voting machines that register votes in elections. Who could forget that chad debarcle in Florida during the last US presidential election. All that talk of nipples had The Green Man's imagination off on flights of fancy when he should have been concentrating on other things.

Anyway, back to Diebold. If you visit their site (click here) you will see that patriotism is something that they have embraced with enthusiasm. In a move that would have me a little unsettled if I was a US citizen, Wally O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, whose machines are critical to probity in the US presidential election, has written to all Ohio Replublicans in support of President Bush and soliciting funds for the next presidential campaign.

Maintaining an arms length distance between candidates and the voting system doesn't appear to be quite as important in the USA as we would view it here in Australia.