THE STORY OF THE VOTING VENDOR VULTURES AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM
This is written for those of you who know something's rotten, but haven't made the plunge into this the greatest untold story in our history. I have only compiled a small part of the available information. This is not my work so much as my collecting some of the work of a few of the committed activists mentioned in here. There are many others who are not mentioned - all of whom have made a commitment to spend part of their time resisting what is essentially the take over of our democracy. I know there's a large number of people who know some of the pieces of this story of election theft, but don't quite know where to get an overview.
Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media (Re-Media) will be holding screenings of documentaries dealing with our elections and holding forums, bringing together experts to share additional information and answer people's questions. Hopefully this will give those of you who recognize the importance of this issue, a starting point to learn more. *
Overview
We are in the midst of what will hopefully be recalled as a very dark period in the history of the United States. Because we're in the middle of it and because the corporate press has ceased to function as the independent watchdog the Constitution intended, the majority of people don't know we are now forced to vote on machines which can readily steal and have stolen our votes.
Most Americans still believe that government is, or at least should be, accountable to the people and when you give them the information of how all states (except NY, for the moment) have been forced to vote on these electronic voting machines which at best are shoddy, faulty, easily compromised and breakdown regularly, and at worst have been regularly hacked in the past few elections they can't even take it in because it doesn't jive with their reality. Add to that the fact that there is no functional certification process for these machines, security is non existent, numerous studies have demonstrated the ease of rigging an election, plus the documented evidence of widespread computer "glitches", almost all of which favored Republicans and you have what should be the biggest story since the birth of the nation (it has been suggested that the second biggest story may be the silence of the press)
If we are still a democratic republic then all legitimate power emanates from we the people and the way we exercise that power is through the vote. The only way for the people to maintain control over their elections is to have public supervision and oversight, especially of the vote counting. Computerized voting machines deprive citizens and their government officials of their right to observe and supervise the people's election. It is simply not possible to observe what goes on inside the black box of the computer. Both touch-screen computers (DREs) [with or without paper trails] and Optical Scan counters (OSs) (which count the paper ballot a voter fills out by her/his own hand) eliminate the needed transparency, but DREs are worse than OSs because at least with OSs, there are paper ballots which can theoretically be recounted.
If regular citizens can no longer verify that their votes are properly counted we've lost our ability to be a free, self-governing people. The Orwellian Help America Vote Act (HAVA) required every state to surrender citizen oversight and control of their elections to an oligopoly, which includes people with shocking conflicts of interest, felons, corporate interests with a powerful profit motive for getting certain people into office, and others beholden to their right wing Republican investors.
This is the scandalous story of how racketeering, corruption, fraud and deception resulted in a few companies dominating the computer voting machine marketjust in time to receive the $4 billion dollar hand out from the federal government. These few companies manufacture both the DREs and the OSs that the states have been forced to buy. What sort of voting machine can possibly be the fruit of this venomous tree with its rotting, diseased branches?
We must all actively work to reject these voting machines which can and will steal our votes and rob of us our ability to control our election and retain our days as free people. The irony (or perhaps the point) is the changes that are needed to eliminate these theft-enabling devices are far more simple and far less expensive than anything Congress seems willing to consider. We don't need to spend our taxes (as proposed in the Holt bill) on more high tech equipment and pour millions more into a testing and certification processes that will never serve to secure our elections, but rather will only serve to feed these Voting Vendor Vultures. We need paper ballots, hand counted in public view in sufficient amounts to overcome the potential for fraud on the Optical Scanner, should we still employ the Scanner to assist in the counting. We need to return citizen oversight and control to the people, who should not have to rely on a computer expert to know whether their votes were counted as cast. We need to take back our election system or forfeit what's left of our democracy.
HOW TWO VOTING MACHINE COMPANIES CAME TO COUNT 80% OF AMERICA'S VOTES
The electronic voting machine industry is dominated by only a few corporations - Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Diebold, Sequoia and Hart Intercivic, but ES&S and Diebold dominate the field: Together they count an estimated 80% of U.S. electronic votes. Looking back at the history of mergers and acquisitions which produced these two giants, one must question if there really is a difference between them. Bob Urosevich is currently president of Diebold and Todd Urosevich is vice president of ES&S. The two brothers started out together in the early days of the electronic voting industry (1980s) and now together they control the market.
Election Systems and Software (ES&S): Mergers, Acquisitions, Dubious Investors and Conflicts of Interest
Todd and Bob Urosevich founded ES&S's seminal corporation, Data Mark, in the early 1980s. In 1984, the two brothers obtained financing from the far-right Ahmanson family who purchased a 68% ownership interest. The company's name was then changed to American Information Systems (AIS). In 1987 the Amhansons sold their shares in AIS to Omaha World-Herald (45%) and the McCarthy Group (35%) .
Omaha World-Herald was owned by Peter Kiewit, the head of Peter Kiewit Sons' Inc. As Bev Harris noted in Hacked! High Tech Election Theft in America, "if anything is less appropriate than Chuck Hagel's ties to ES&S, it would be a Kiewit relationship of any kind to any voting system vendor." (See endnote 7 regarding Senator Hagel's ownership in the voting machine company whose machines were used to count his votes).
Peter Kiewit Sons' Inc. and its subsidiaries have been involved with a string of bid-rigging cases in 11 states and 2 countries: In an antitrust case that involved charges of bid-rigging in New Orleans, Kiewit pleaded no contest and paid $100,000 in fines and $300,000 in a civil settlement. In South Dakota, a Kiewit subsidiary pleaded guilty to bid-rigging on road contracts and paid a fine of $350,000. In Kansas, a Kiewit subsidiary was found guilty of bid-rigging and mail fraud on a federal highway project. The firm was fined $900,000 and a company official was sentenced to a year in jail. In Nebraska, a Kiewit subsidiary paid $1.8 million for bid-rigging on a state highway project and a Kiewit vice president was jailed.
This is an incredibly complete and very readable article. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to be brought up to date on that debacle which is HAVA.
Nice work, Andi!
Joan Brunwasser, voting integrity editor, OpEdNews
by
Joan Brunwasser (156 articles, 3527 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 624 comments)
on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 6:56:14 PM
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