"Diebold Election Systems, which makes voting machines, is waging legal war against grass-roots advocates, including dozens of college students, who are posting on the Internet copies of the company's internal communications about its electronic voting machines," reports John Schwartz. The company's attorneys have sent letters threatening legal action against the students, who are circulating "thousands of e-mail messages and memorandums dating to March 2003 from January 1999 that include discussions of bugs in Diebold's software and warnings that its computer network are poorly protected against hackers." Questions are also being raised about whether Diebold's voting machines can be trusted to deliver an honest result. "Diebold has become a favorite target of advocates who accuse it of partisanship," Schwartz states. "Company executives have made large contributions to the Republican Party and the chief executive, Walden W. O'Dell, said in an invitation to a fund-raiser that he was 'committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.'"