20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The United States

[muchacho]

interesting....
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20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The United States
B12824 / Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:09:12 / Government
By Bob Rowe

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 US voting machine industry.

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

4. The chairman and 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 next year.”

5. 35% of ES&S is owned by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a long-time friend of the Bush family, was 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 US and counts almost 60% of all US votes.

9. Diebold’s new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately 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 employs 5 convicted felons as developers. These are the people who write the voting machine computer code.

13. Diebold’s Senior Vice-President, Jeff Dean, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.

14. Diebold Senior Vice-President 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 the security was so bad. Despite Diebold’s claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie at http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov.)

17. 30% of all US votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail. 18. Bush’s Help America Vote Act of 2002 has as its goal to replace all machines with the new electronic touch screen systems with no paper trail.

19. All—not some—but all the voting machine errors detected and reported went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

20. Major statistical voting oddities (odds on the order of 250 million to 1!)—again always favoring Bush—have been mathematically demonstrated by experts.

Such amazing odds, the equivalent of statistical miracles these were. Was it God? or was it Diebold…?

http://www.guerrillanews.com/blogs/12824/20_Amazing_Facts_About_Voting_In_The_United_States

[stellanoir]

1. Nice though unsettling

compendium of not so fun facts to know and tell.

We all get so riled up about this that it's often hard to put the issues forth so clearly.

Thanks K & R

[LynzM]

2. Wow... Great compilation.

No matter how you look at it, that's a damning list.

[Notoverit]

3. Sigh. If only our candidate wouldn't have allowed his voters to be blamed

for this!

[nashville_brook]

4. felons in charge of elections with "proprietary" software --

what could go wrong?

k and r!

[Uncle Joe]

9. Apparently it was too dangerous to allow felons to vote in Florida,

hence the purge (which of course snared many innocent probable Democratic voters), but it's ok to let them write the proprietary software counting the votes, go figure:shrug:

[nashville_brook]

10. good one!

[byronius]

5. And they are served by the perception of many Democrats

that election fraud is a wacko conspiracy theory. It frightens them so much, they will ignore the flatly true science behind the conclusions. I wish we were a braver, more logical breed.

[Sinti]

6. K&R additionally those two brothers and their financial baker Howard

Ahmanson are Dominionists or Christian Reconstructionists, whatever term suits your fancy.
This is a growing faction of the religious right whose goal is to create a theocracy here at home, and to achieve "dominion" over the rest of the world. Scary times.

Wikipedia on Dominionism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism

[onenote]

7. large dose of truth, but it needs to be updated

This list has been around for awhile and while its largely accurate, it needs updating. For example, the statement that the pres of Diebold and a VP of ESS are brothers was true at one time, but the brother that was president of Diebold (Bob Urosevich) was replaced around 2 years ago. Similarly, Jeffrey Dean was a Sr. VP of a company bought out by Diebold, but it doesn't appear that he had that title at Diebold. Rather, he was a consultant to Diebold. The claim that there is no federal regulatory agency with regulatory authority or oversight over the voting machine industry also may be a bit misleading. The Election Assistance Commission's stated responsibilities include "developing, in consultation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Technical Guidelines Development Committee, voluntary voting system guidelines and providing for a national program for testing, certification, and decertification of voting systems." While its true that EAC apparently has no enforcement authority, and its guidelines are voluntary, the statement would be stronger and less misleading if it focused on the lack of any federal agency with authority to enforce voting machine standards. Finally, the statement that Hagel owns 35 percent of ESS also seems to be an overstatement since he is reported to have an investment of between $1 and $5 million in the company and my guess is that ES&S is bigger than a $4 million to $15 million company.

onenote

[muchacho]

8. thanks...

for the update!

[many a good man]

12. Kick! Great info, onenote

2004 will probably be the last election for Triad, the onetime leader in Ohio counting. Funny their rise coincided with the Republican takeover of Ohio statewide races...

[upi402]

11. k/r n/t

[goclark]

13. Excellent Post now we know >There must be a Boston Tea Party!!!

What are we waiting for ~ the clock is ticking!

Is there ANY site that is actually DOING something about Election Fraud?

THIS is the only way that I know that the information can get out clearly to ALL americans.

Please somebody, let's get this show on the road. :patriot:

I beg of you, please read the thread.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/goclark

[pola]

14. IS THERE GOING TO BE A BOSTON TEA PARTY ?

as we discussed here, throwing mock voting machines into the harbor, holding signs that educate the citizens to THESE FACTS ???????????
I thought people were working on it NOW .... ????

[Kurovski]

15. It's an old list, and yet, and yet...

they used to call us "conspiracy theorists". :crazy:

The accusations is dying out, because now anyone who accuses others of being a "conspiracy theorist" regarding election fraud risks the appearance of being a "criminal accomplice".

[mhr]

16. Personally Observed ES&S Touch Screen Switch Votes

During the 2004 General Election, I personally observed ES&S touch screen machines switch votes from democratic candidates to republican candidates.

As an early vote election clerk in Dallas County Texas, many senior citizens asked for help in frustration when the machines did not properly reflect their desires on the summary screen prior to logging the vote.

I would assist them in reentering their preferred votes only to find the votes changed when at the final summary page again.

At the time, no one in the democratic party was interested in pursuing my observations though I did offer to file an affidavit.

This is one reason that I am now a registered independent. Both parties are non responsive to constituents.

[Ian_rd]

17. This list could have been better, clearer, and longer

One point that Mr. Rowe could have been more clear on is this: All of the three major voting machine corporations - Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia - claim that NOBODY should be allowed to inspect their computer code.

While at the same time, as stated above, there is absolutely no way to verify that the votes are being tabulated correctly. And another thing that I really wish was included in the above list is that Diebold's code was actually left unprotected at one time allowing Bev Harris, an independent voting machine activist, to copy the code. This code was reviewed by software engineers and determined to be highly unsecured and shoddy.

[autorank]

19. Very Welcome to DU!!! The issues are citizen rights to transparency.

There are those who argue that there is a better way to make touchscreens (DRE's) "verifiable"...some sort of little receipt you get when you touch the screen.

=>Of course the DRE can record anything it wants and give you a receipt that's contrary to that. It's happened.
=>If the locality-state designates the DREs as the "ballot of record", the receipts don't matter.
=>If the receipts are not collected in an efficient fashion, they don't matter.
=>And you'll love this one, if the receipts are produced when you first touch the screen and you change your vote, they really don't matter. You'll either get two receipts and you'll hand in the wrong one; or you'll get a concurrent receipt (the standard now) and it will be of the vote you changed.

This is one reason, among many, that a recount that will count can't be generated by an autit of "verifiable paper ballots." The recount will be of the machine totals, which are unauditable now, except by vendors. Even if they are opened to citizens , how do you find enough computer experts to audit all the damn machines.

Simplify -- we have a right a citizenz to KNOW that our vote is taken and counted properly. We have a right to observe the process counting or have it codified and performed by public officials (taking the ballots to cenral locations, reporting, etc.). It all has to be public.

The elected need to prove to us that they were elected in order to rule. If they can't, well, then we do not concent to their rule.

[Kelvin Mace]

20. Actually,

the code was given to Bev. At the time she didn't know what an FTP program was, never mind how to use it.

[peace_on_earth]

18. Link to chimp video was bad, here's a good one

http://www.bbvdocs.org/videos/baxterVPR.mov