20 facts about US voting

[willy_jack]

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S
2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
4. Chairman/CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President."
5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
9. Diebold's touch screen voting machines have no paper trail. There is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was put in by voters.
10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of General Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.
14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because of horrible security. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a monkey was able to do so!
17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother (I know it's worn out, but had I eliminated it, there would only be 19 facts).
20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.

[transparentaura]

I've read about all these and more, though the stories are well documented they are mostly the work of the alternative press. I predict that there will be some effort by the white house and/or conservative legislators to hamstring independent media. Look for it to be called smething to the effect of "defense of truth act" or "integrity in news" or something with the word "Freedom" in the title. The mainstream media has ceased to do any meaningful investigative reporting, whether this is the result of Bushs support of relaxing laws regarding media monopolies and the resulting concentration of media in a few powerful (mostly republican run) conglomerates, or the fear of being "Roved" like Mike Wallace. In wallace's case, the documents may have been faked, but there is plenty of proof to substatiate what was on them. Many claim it was no coincidence these documents sufaced when they did, it was widely known that CBS was working on the story and planting those documents is just the lind of sleaze one would expect from Rove. After all, it was Karl that, in another campaign arranged to have his candidates office bugged, then leaked this "discovery" to the press, blaming his opponent. The right always dismisses voting fraud as paranoia or sore losing, but consider what their reaction would have been if Clinton or Gore had links like these to the polling companies. Besides the Bush gang has always run dirty, win at all costs campaigns and shown very little regard for integrity or truth. They still behave as if the rules don't apply to them and they are above the law, and their disdain for uncooperative media is legendary.