Online JournalA handful of Republican corporations and British-owned companies control the vote count in California and across the nation. Britain and it's offshore territories not only shelter corporate America from taxes due to the U.S. Treasury, the Brits are also providing a haven for vote-counting companies like Accenture, the former Andersen Consulting, currently located in Bermuda and slated to count the military online vote in 2004. It's all enough to make one wonder who won the Revolutionary War . . . American patriots or the British and American Tories? ---
For those who are still living in the Valley of Denial, and think that the California count is a fair election, here is the breakdown. On a geographical basis, British-based Sequoia takes the lead in the vote count in California counties. Twenty-one counties use Sequoia voting technology, 15 counties use ES&S, 14 - Diebold, six - DMF Associates, and two counties use PollStar. On the basis of registered voters, ES&S takes the lead with 7,305,680 voters, Sequoia - 3,682,051, Diebold - 2,412,971, PollStar - 1,308,789, and DMF Associates - 593,978.
ES&S, the nation's largest voting system company, is owned by the Omaha World Herald Company and has solid ties to the Republican Party. ES&S claims on their website that they tabulated "56 percent of the U.S. national vote for the past four presidential elections." Diebold Election Systems, is the second largest company with 33–35 percent of the electronic vote, according to a Diebold spokesperson. Walden O'Dell, Diebold's chief executive, recently wrote a fund-raising letter for the election of President
George Bush. Then there's Sequoia. It is owned by De La Rue, a British-based company and the world's largest commercial security printer and papermaker. They also own a 20 percent stake in Camelot, the operator of Great Britain's National Lottery. Want to take any bets on who wins the California recall, the U.S. presidency in the 2004 election, and maintains control of both houses of Congress? ---