One of the country’s leading manufacturers of electronic voting machines, Diebold, has announced that it is banning its senior executives from making donations to political candidates. The company has come under intense criticism for its ties to the Republican party. Its chairman and CEO Walden O’Dell wrote a letter last year to potential supporters of President Bush in which he said he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” O’Dell also held a $1,000 plate Republican fund-raiser at his home in Columbus. Critics of electronic voting machines fear the presidential election could be fixed if electronic voting machines are used especially if they are being operated by such partisan companies.

In other voting news, the chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission is expected to propose a series of recommendations today to his fellow commissioners to help increase voter confidence in electronic voting machines before the presidential election. According to the New York Times, the commissioner, DeForest Soaries will call on makers of voting machines to allow elections officials to examine their source code; ask elections officials to publicly outline what measures are being taken to ensure security of their systems; and have voting software companies submit their software for review to the National Software Reference Library.