| How We Lost The Vote -
How To Get It Back Again
by
Lynn Landes
OpEdNews.Com
Walden
O'Dell wrote a letter the other day. He wrote a fund-raising letter
to Ohio Republicans. And, in that letter O'Dell said that he
was, "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to
(President Bush) next year."
Walden
O'Dell is the Chairman of the Board of Diebold Election Systems,
the second largest company in America whose business it is - to
count your vote.
O'Dell's
letter should serve as a call to action for Americans,
and for citizens around the world, who have surrendered their
elections to technology and those who control it. American tax
dollars are helping to fund a worldwide conversion from paper
ballots to computer and Internet voting. The effort to promote
electronic elections is being led by three international
organizations: The International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES),
the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA),
and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. IFES
was founded in 1987 by the late F. Clifton White, a high-ranking
Republican Party official who is credited with turning
the GOP into a bastion of right wing
conservatives.
Today, the
right to vote in America is held hostage by technology
- a technology that stands between the voter and a real ballot -
a technology that delivers only circumstantial evidence of a
vote while people push buttons, punch holes, throw levers, and
dial-up.
What
is a real vote? In many countries it's a paper ballot that you
can touch and mark and know who you voted for, that gets hand
counted at the end of the day by local election officials in
full view of fellow citizens and poll watchers...all engaged in
safeguarding your right to a free and fair election. But in
America today, a vote is an electronic image, or an
indecipherable punch card, or a paper tab that lever machines produce. Do
we need both man and machine counting the votes? And if that's the case,
whose count should prevail in the end?
It's
not just political elections that are threatened by voting technology.
The expanding use of the Internet to elect the leaders of our civic
associations, business groups, and labor organizations... threatens
the very fabric of our society. For the companies and
individuals who control voting technology can come from anywhere
and everywhere, unhindered by government restrictions or oversight or
accountability. Last spring Election.com, an Internet voting company, was
purchased by Osan, Ltd., a group of Saudi investors. In the year
2000, Election.com was used to count the votes in the Arizona Democratic
Primary. Although another company, Accenture, has recently purchased the
public sector portion of Election.com, that still leaves the private
sector. Election.com has about 600 customers who use its Internet
voting service, including the Democratic National Committee, the
Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union, the Sierra Club, and the
Florida Bar.
We
are in a constitutional crisis. Our right to vote for our
political leaders and to have our votes counted properly is not just
in jeopardy - there is mounting evidence that it has slipped
away.
How
did we get in this mess?
It all started about 100 years ago.
In 1892, the lever voting machine
was first used in Lockport, New York. By the 1930's most large
cities were using these machines. In 1964, electronic
scanners and computers entered the voting process. It was also in
1964 that pre-election polling and exit polls began to dominate the news.
And although polling data can be used to raise red flags where election
fraud may have occurred, polls can also be used to create false
expectations and in the case of exit polling, data can, and some
say was, used to legitimize rigged election results.
Today, we're
being told that touchscreen machines and Internet voting will make the
process of voting quicker and safer. But in the 2000 election, Canada hand
counted their paper ballots in four hours without suffering any of the
boondoggles that continue to plague our electronic elections. Even if it
took four days or four weeks to count ballots, democracy is not
on a stop watch, where time is more important than how the
race is won. And how the race is won, is at issue.
There
is a long history of voting machine irregularities that span the last
several decades. They have been documented in the Saltman Report, the book
VoteScam, the landmark article Pandora's Box, and in countless
reports and news stories. And, although we may prefer that this not
be a partisan issue, voting machine irregularities appear to
overwhelmingly favor Republican candidates. This was alarmingly
apparent in 2002, when 74% of the upset elections went
to Republican candidates. Many of the Republican upset
victories were well outside of the margin of error of the
pre-election polling.
Who sells
and services voting machines and technology is beginning to
attract a lot of attention. Only U.S. citizens can vote... but
anyone can count your vote, including felons and foreigners,
political candidates and office holders, news organizations and
defense industries. Many voting systems companies have
partnerships and agreements with each other, making it difficult to
separate one from the other.
As the
situation stands today, three
corporations (Election Systems and Software - ES&S, Diebold, and
Sequoia) sell and service the machines and software that counts about
80% of the electronic vote in the U.S..
ES&S,
the nation's largest voting company, is owned by the Omaha World Herald
Company and has solid ties to the Republican Party. Senator Chuck
Hagel (R-NE) was the past president of American Information
Systems, the company that counted the votes in his first
election. AIS then merged with Business Records Corporation to
form ES&S, which then proceeded to count the votes
in Senator Hagel's second election. At that time, it has been
reported, that the Senator had a substantial financial interest in the
company.
Sequoia
is owned by De La Rue, a British-based company whose machines
will count the votes in more California counties than any other
company in the upcoming recall election. De La Rue is the
world's largest commercial security printer and papermaker and owns a 20%
stake in Camelot, the operator of the Great Britain's National
Lottery.
The
Internet voting business is dominated by two corporations: Accenture, which
is based in the British territory of Bermuda, and VoteHere from
Seattle, Washington. The U.S. Department of Defense recently
awarded a coalition of corporations, led by Accenture, the
contract to provide the Internet service that will count the votes
of the U.S. military and other civilians in the 2004
presidential election. As many as 6 million voters could
use their system. Accenture was formally known as Andersen
Consulting, a subsidiary of Arthur Andersen, a company convicted of
destroying evidence in the Enron scandal. A major business
partner of Accenture's is Halliburton, Vice president Dick Cheney's former
employer.
The
current Chairman of VoteHere, the leading worldwide supplier of Internet
voting technology, is Admiral Bill Owens, a former senior military
assistant to both Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney.
Ex-CIA director Robert Gates, who was caught up
in the Iran Contra scandal, also sits on the VoteHere board.
But
there are many other corporations that work with the top voting
companies and therefore have a piece of the action. It's a who's
who of corporate America, a corporate America that we are routinely
reminded doesn't want to pay taxes, likes to cook the books,
and frequently engages in predatory business practices. Some of
the companies who want to count your vote include: Microsoft,
Dell, Cisco and various military defense companies, such as Northrop
Grumman, General Dynamics, Unisys, National Semiconductor, and Perot
Systems Government Services. Yes, even Ross Perot wants
to count your vote.
The
new kid on the block is Populex, which is creating
an electronic voting system for Illinois. It has on its advisory
board, Frank Carlucci of The Carlyle Group. Carlucci was
the former Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, a
Deputy Director of the CIA during the Carter Administration, and also
worked in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. Carlucci's
business partner is former President George H.W. Bush.
The boards
of many of these companies are dominated by top donors to the
Republican Party, former high ranking military officers, and several
ex-CIA directors. The CIA directors include: James Woolsey, Bobby Ray
Inman, and John Deutch, and as mentioned before, Robert Gates
and Frank Carlucci. The CIA, it should be remembered, has a
decades-long track record of assisting in the brutal overthrow of
democratically elected governments around the world.
Some
of the largest companies in the elections industry are privately held and
therefore not open to scrutiny by investors or the public. And in a
similar vein, the software used by
voting systems companies to count your vote, is also not open to
inspection... except by three individuals selected by a private
non-profit organization called, The National Association of State
Election Directors, which has close ties to the
elections industry.
So,
today, in most voting precincts, there is nothing for the poll watchers to
watch, nothing for Federal Observers to observe, and no real
opportunity to discover if votes are being altered and
if election fraud is being committed. In many cases, there is no
paper ballot or paper trail of any kind, eliminating the possibility
of a recount or an audit. When legal challenges to election results do
occur, these companies can and do go to court and
successfully shield their technology from
inspection by claiming proprietary rights. And even if their
technology is open to inspection, the manipulation of votes
can occur in an endless variety of ways and remain
undetected.
The
lack of transparency and accountability of voting technology in use
today makes the Voting Rights Act of 1967 and its
enforcement...moot...and that fact alone..one would think... would set the
stage for a solid legal challenge. But to date there has been no
litigation filed using that argument. Strangely enough, voting rights
groups like Common Cause and the ACLU of Southern California have
actually adopted policies in opposition to paper ballots. And some
organizations for the disabled are taking a similar position. "Total
access" to voting is really
code language for imposing on the electorate a
paperless voting process that provides no security against election
fraud or technical failure.
Where
does the federal government come into the picture? Nowhere, really. There
is no federal agency that has regulatory authority over
the elections industry. There are no restrictions on who can
own or operate a voting systems company. There are no mandatory
federal standards for voting technology, and no federal certification of
that technology. Meanwhile, the states are relying on guidelines and a
certification process that are essentially controlled by the
industry. The free-market is in control of our elections and the result is
that the process has been privatized and our votes are up for grabs.
Congress has
made the situation worse. With no safeguards in place, The Help America
Vote Act (HAVA) allocated $3.8 billion to encourage states
to buy the latest voting technologies - touchscreen machines and Internet
voting. These technologies, like the ones that have gone
before them, are an open invitation to vote fraud and
technical failure, except on a massive scale. And
particularly, with the introduction of Internet
voting, we are truly entering the Land of Oz
where one person can literally control elections across the country.
The
right to vote and to have your vote counted
properly is the centerpiece of our democracy. Yet, most people
today say that they don't believe that their vote really counts. And
perhaps, they're right. Perhaps they've sensed it
intuitively. Perhaps, when they look at our elected leaders, out of
touch with the needs of most voters, unwilling to break with wealthy
donors, they have every reason to suspect that elections are a charade to
convince voters that the power lies in their hands, when it truly rests
elsewhere. The concealment,
the secrecy, the non-transparency, inherent in the use of any machine -
mechanical, electrical, computerized, or the Internet - is counter to a
process where local public oversight is a
critical component to ensure our right to free and fair
elections. Instead, voters are told that they should
trust...trust in their election officials to pick an honest company with
sound technology. But faith and trust was not what our forefathers had in
mind when they created a government of checks and balances. With our
current voting process, those checks and balances are a distant memory.
What
can be done? Speak out. Educate those around you.
Most people haven't given this issue a second thought. At the
same time, the U.S. Department of Justice should be sued for
failure to enforce the Voting Rights Act. The exclusive use of
technology to vote, technology that counts votes in a manner that
cannot be observed, violates your rights. If technology is
used, it should provide the voter with paper ballot
that the voter verifies and then gets hand counted at the
local precinct. And no election should depend on electricity or
technology. If the power shuts off, the election should go
on. But, speaking for myself, it seems that voting
technology creates more problems than it solves.
As
I look out over this room, full of concerned citizens...as I
receive a steady stream of calls and emails...and see an increasing number
of news stories about this issue, perhaps a second American
revolution is on its way. A revolution to take back the vote.
And it couldn't begin in a better place than Philadelphia.
Lynn
Landes is the publisher of EcoTalk.org
and a news reporter for DUTV in
Philadelphia, PA. Formerly Lynn was a radio show host for WDVR
in New Jersey and a regular commentator for a BBC
radio program. She can be reached at (215) 629-3553 / lynnlandes@earthlink.net
This article is copyright by Lynn Landes,
and originally published by opednews.com,
but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media
if this entire credit paragraph is attached.
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