No, that's not at all what I'm suggesting. Walden O'Dell was a top fundraiser for George W. Bush. He also ran the machines that elected him president. He is obviously legally allowed to do all of this, including having an opinion (though I do not believe it should be legal to raise funds for a candidate and also run the machines that count the votes).

What I'm saying is: Anyone who builds voting machines should not be taking sides. Especially financial sides. It's a clear conflict of interest, where the result is that I cannot possibly trust the machines to do what they say.

The people building them are Republicans. The machines are closed, proprietary devices. They cannot be trusted. Hence, we must assume they are rigged.

The problem is really the mechanism of voting, it needs to be verifiable and the machines need to be assistants in the process, not black boxes. I think some more thought has to be put into it to make systems which assist the voting process, but not make closed proprietary systems.