"To suggest that by giving money to any single candidate they are doing anything but supporting the causes that candidate stands for is just plain wrong. These are politically informed, passionate people who are putting their money where their mouth is and nothing more," Furman wrote.
Some activists did not agree with this explanation.
"That's called a stakeholder. If your husband is the President, you cannot make the claim there's not a connection because your livelihood is tied to that company," Bev Harris of Black Box Voting told Atlanta Progressive News.
The Curlings are not only reliant on salary from Choicepoint; they are also stockholders, and so is their foundation, Harris said.
Meanwhile, Greg Palast threatened Atlanta Progressive News with a slander lawsuit if we were to reprint off-the-record comments made by some local and national voting rights activists which may have criticized Palast's work.
"I'm not going to allow Choicepoint to run a whisper campaign against me. Choicepoint takes shots at me all the time. This is a sneaky tactic, to use cutouts to pretend there's independent people questioning my reporting who are not independent," Palast said.
Atlanta Progressive News has contacted a number of local and national voting rights and voting integrity activists, and was surprised to see how many were actually engaging in the practice of defending Choicepoint. Several respondents were granted off-the-record interviews.
John Gideon of VoteTrustUSA said he had "no comment," when asked about the Curlings' support of the organization or others, or of Scott Holcomb's campaign.
"Choicepoint is a company that's been involved with elections in ways that make a lot of us uncomfortable. They were definitely involved with buying the company while it was involved in the [faulty] felon voting purge," Bev Harris said.
"At the heart of this is the fact the whole issue of what's done with our personal data is not properly thought out and does not have the proper protections," Harris said.
Mrs. Curling had been participating on the VoteTrustUSA listserv under a false name, Harris said. "So people didn't know they were discussing their plans with the wife of Choicepoint's President."
Some of those who defended Choicepoint said it wasn't Choicepoint that was responsible for the 2000 disenfranchisement in Florida; instead, it was the company they acquired and profited from.
"That's like saying 'my hand did it, not me,'" Greg Palast said in disagreement with that reasoning.
"They can be responsible for anything they should have known when considering the purchase," Harris said.
MORE ABOUT CHOICEPOINT
Choicepoint's deceptive practices begin with the first sentence on their website: "For almost a century Choicepoint has been a trusted source and leading provider of decision-making information." A spin-off from another Georgia-based company, Equifax, Choicepoint became a separate, publicly-traded company, in August 1997.
Some activists did not agree with this explanation.
"That's called a stakeholder. If your husband is the President, you cannot make the claim there's not a connection because your livelihood is tied to that company," Bev Harris of Black Box Voting told Atlanta Progressive News.
The Curlings are not only reliant on salary from Choicepoint; they are also stockholders, and so is their foundation, Harris said.
"I'm not going to allow Choicepoint to run a whisper campaign against me. Choicepoint takes shots at me all the time. This is a sneaky tactic, to use cutouts to pretend there's independent people questioning my reporting who are not independent," Palast said.
Atlanta Progressive News has contacted a number of local and national voting rights and voting integrity activists, and was surprised to see how many were actually engaging in the practice of defending Choicepoint. Several respondents were granted off-the-record interviews.
John Gideon of VoteTrustUSA said he had "no comment," when asked about the Curlings' support of the organization or others, or of Scott Holcomb's campaign.
"Choicepoint is a company that's been involved with elections in ways that make a lot of us uncomfortable. They were definitely involved with buying the company while it was involved in the [faulty] felon voting purge," Bev Harris said.
"At the heart of this is the fact the whole issue of what's done with our personal data is not properly thought out and does not have the proper protections," Harris said.
Mrs. Curling had been participating on the VoteTrustUSA listserv under a false name, Harris said. "So people didn't know they were discussing their plans with the wife of Choicepoint's President."
Some of those who defended Choicepoint said it wasn't Choicepoint that was responsible for the 2000 disenfranchisement in Florida; instead, it was the company they acquired and profited from.
"That's like saying 'my hand did it, not me,'" Greg Palast said in disagreement with that reasoning.
"They can be responsible for anything they should have known when considering the purchase," Harris said.
MORE ABOUT CHOICEPOINT
Choicepoint's deceptive practices begin with the first sentence on their website: "For almost a century Choicepoint has been a trusted source and leading provider of decision-making information." A spin-off from another Georgia-based company, Equifax, Choicepoint became a separate, publicly-traded company, in August 1997.
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