On the Voting Machine Makers' Tab

[NVMojo]

remember this story??? Was there ever any future connection made to the voting machine companies and other election officials? I came across an older article out of Vegas that talked about how the city of Vegas' election official quit her job and appointed the current election official, Lomax, right after she talked the city to buy those old printer less Sequoias ten years ago. The same 2,000 old Sequoias used in this past election in spite of what the national media has said ...they had no printers and represented more than 50% of the machines used in Nevada's election.

Anyways that former Vegas election official went to work for Sequioa after she got her bosses to buy them. I think she's still connected to the purchases made by SOS Dean Heller and being pushed by him nationwide today....

If we don't start finding out the GOP connections to this, soon, the entire country will be run on GOP connected emachines with printers. Is that a paper trail you will be comfortable trusting??

Sept. 12, 2004 Editorial

As doubts have grown about the reliability of electronic voting, some of its loudest defenders have been state and local election officials. Many of those same officials have financial ties to voting machine companies. While they may sincerely think that electronic voting machines are so trustworthy that there is no need for a paper record of votes, their views have to be regarded with suspicion until their conflicts are addressed.

Computer scientists, who understand the technology better than anyone else, have been outspoken about the perils of electronic voting. Good government groups, like Common Cause, are increasingly mobilizing grass-roots opposition. And state governments in a growing number of states, including California and Ohio, have pushed through much-needed laws that require electronic voting machines to produce paper records.

snip...

What election officials do not mention, however, are the close ties they have to the voting machine industry. A disturbing number end up working for voting machine companies. When Bill Jones left office as California's secretary of state in 2003, he quickly became a consultant to Sequoia Voting Systems. His assistant secretary of state took a full-time job there. Former secretaries of state from Florida and Georgia have signed on as lobbyists for Election Systems and Software and Diebold Election Systems. The list goes on.

snip ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/opinion/12sun2.html?ei=5070&en=a49fac50f697711f&ex=1105333200&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=

[k8conant]

1. We must follow these tracks...n/t

[para]

2. it's already too late

we didn't take to the streets in 2000, and they will continue to get away with it until we organize an effective resistance, economically, perhaps.

[vlad]

3. Sec.state org

The national assoc. of the secretary of state ( www. NASS.org ) website should be looked through. I wonder if they communicate directly from that site to all of the voting machine company sites they list on their site.. http://www.nass.org/corpaffiliates/directory.html

here's some of them of course...
NASS Corporate Affiliate Directory
Last updated:11/19/04 na

Business Information Services:

CT Corporation System (company description)
Dun & Bradstreet (company description)
Saber Consulting (company description)
West (company description)
Corporate Filing Services:

CT Corporation System (company description)
e-Government Solutions:

Covansys (company description)
Hart InterCivic (company description)
IBM Government Industry (company description)
InfoSENTRY (company description)
ManTech International (company description)
NIC (company description)
PCC Technology Group (company description)
Saber Consulting (company description)
UNISYS (company description)
X.Systems (company description)
Election Equipment/Supplies:

3M Touch Systems (company description)
Accenture eDemocracy Services (company description)
AccuPoll, Inc. (company description)
Alpha Data Services (company description)
Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (company description)
Election Data Services, Inc. (company description)
Election Systems & Software (company description)
Hart InterCivic (company description)
Indra Systems (company description)
Perfect Voting System (company description)
Sequoia Voting Systems (company description)
UniLect Corporation (company description)
Election Management/Consulting:

Accenture eDemocracy Services (company description)
Caliper Corporation (company description)
Covansys (company description)
Election Data Services, Inc. (company description)
Election Systems & Software (company description)
ESRI, Inc. (company description)
IBM Government Industry (company description)
Indra Systems (company description)
InfoSENTRY (company description)
NIC (company description)
PCC Technology Group (company description)
Quest Information Systems (company description)
Saber Consulting (company description)
Sequoia Voting Systems (company description)
VOTEC Corporation (company description)
VoteHere, Inc. (company description)
Legal Publishing:

Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (company

[kuozzman]

4. My Dad is President at DeLaRue, which owns Sequoia

since around June of 2002, but they're also currently trying to sell it. He's President in the U.S., It's London based-he's not CEO.

I've only really talked about the VMs with him a couple times, back closer to the election. But he truly thinks they are legit, simply b/c they(DeLaRue-since they bought Sequoia) only sell them with printers. I know they only sell them w/printers and I think those are legit? But obviously Sequoia has sold a ton of different equipment in the past that is still in use.

He doesn't really do anything directly regarding voting machines- that's a very small part of their business. I'm pretty sure he just gets news/updates or whatever. I think Sequoia still basically operates independently from DeLaRue. They probably kept most the same employees, etc.

I've been closely following the election, mainly Ohio for a while now, and also believe the Chimp stole it, but haven't discussed the VMs w/my Dad much. He knows I think Bush stole it, but also knows DeLaRue only sells machines w/printers(are those legit), so it's not like he's CEO at Diebold. But if these Sequoia SOBs are doing crooked shit, he'd want to know. I'm curious now too. Since November, I've really just been following/digging stuff up in Ohio, so don't even hear about Sequoia much. But let me know if there is any way I might be able to help you.

[Amaryllis]

6. Please see post #5. And see these links:

How They Could Steal the Election This Time by Ronnie Dugger, where he discusses all the voting machine companies. (Thanks for your post; you are in an extremely valuable postition to do some crucial educating.)

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040816&s=dugger

"British-owned Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, California, whose touch-screen voting equipment was rejected as insecure against fraud by New York City in the 1990s"

And this:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/vote-d24.shtml

US voting machines: Will 2004 elections be electronically rigged?
By Alex Lefebvre
24 December 2003
Back to screen version | Send this link by email | Email the author

Recent revelations about US voting machinery companies and their products raise serious questions about the integrity of the electoral process in the US, as well as in other countries. These companies, which have intimate ties to the US right wing, operate with no real outside supervision. According to information that has emerged, their products’ safety designs are so poor that they offer many opportunities to rig elections, especially for well-connected insiders.

The crucial issue has been the transition from paper or mechanical balloting to electronic balloting. In many electronic balloting systems, voters’ information is simply stored electronically (known as Direct Recording Election, or DRE), as opposed to printing out a paper ballot that the voter can then check to see if the ballot matches his intentions. However, voting systems corporations generally claim that the software code that records votes is proprietary, and therefore deny outside personnel access to the code. When candidates or organizations have sued for the right to access the code, judges have ruled in favor of the voting systems corporations. The companies have also threatened to void warranties for the machines if they are inspected.

Voters who cast their ballots using any of a number of electronic voting systems have no way to check that their votes have been properly recorded. A New York election commissioner, Douglas Kellner, said: “Using electronic voting machines to count ballots is akin to taking all the paper ballots and handing them over to a couple of computer tech people to count them in a secret room, and then tell us how it came out. This is not an acceptable way of conducting elections in a democracy.”

The democratic qualifications of the pre-DRE voting in the US should not be overstated. There have been numerous cases of elections rigged via manipulation of other voting machinery systems, or by altogether different means. However, the scope of unverifiability and the centralized, secretive nature of the tallying process create the conditions for an unprecedented attack on the public’s democratic right to have its vote counted.

The Florida state primary elections of 2002, in which Jim McBride defeated former attorney general Janet Reno for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, provided an example of the type of electoral irregularities that can be expected with DRE voting. Vote tallies in several precincts of Miami-Dade and Broward counties aroused Reno’s suspicion, and she asked Professor Rebecca Mercuri, an expert in computer sciences and voting machine technology, to investigate.

In an interview with Salon, Mercuri said: “She called me because they saw the number rolling out of the machines, and they figured something was screwy. You would have places where there were over 1,300 and there would be like one vote for governor.” When asked about the process, the voting machinery supplier, Election System and Software (ES&S), sent a technician to recover the lost votes. Mercuri commented: “Basically ES&S comes in and they’ve got some sort of tool they stick in some part of the machine and they pull some data out of it. How can you trust that?”


The voting systems industry’s political and criminal connections

The voting machinery industry is dominated by a few large corporations—Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Diebold and Sequoia. ES&S machines count between 55 and 60 percent of votes cast in the US; Diebold and ES&S machines put together count about 80 percent of US votes.

ES&S, formerly American Information Systems, enjoys impeccable conservative credentials and links to the clerical-fascist right. Its 1993-1994 CEO and 1992-1995 chairman, Chuck Hagel, became a Republican senator from Nebraska in 1996 and won his re-election in 2002 in elections where votes were counted entirely on ES&S machines. Although Hagel sold his entire stake in American Information Systems before becoming a candidate, he kept a $5 million stake in its parent company, the McCarthy Group. Hagel failed to disclose this fact on congressional documents.

ES&S also enjoyed the financial support of far-right California billionaire Howard Ahmanson. He provided capital to brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich, the founders of ES&S precursor American Information Systems. Bob Urosevich now heads the election division of Diebold, and Todd Urosevich is a top executive at ES&S. Ahmanson also funded the Chalcedon Foundation, a leading institution of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, which advocates the establishment of Christian theocracy and Old Testament law in the US, including the death penalty for homosexuals.

Diebold is largely controlled by staunch Republicans. Besides Urosevich, Diebold’s current CEO Walden O’Dell is a leading fundraiser for George Bush’s re-election campaign; he recently declared he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” During the 2000 and 2002 election campaigns, Diebold donated over $200,000 exclusively to the Republican Party.

Sequoia is largely controlled by the British cash-printing firm De La Rue. Its management has a remarkable record of dishonesty: executives Phil Foster and Pasquale Ricci were convicted in 1999 of paying Louisiana commissioner of elections Jerry Fowler an $8 million bribe to buy their voting machines. These convictions took place in the context of a massive election scandal in Louisiana involving connections with organized crime, in which Sequoia executives gave immunized testimony against state officials. Ricci in particular was suspected of having mob links.

Sequoia is also linked to the Bush family: De La Rue’s corporate parent, private equity firm Madison Dearborn, is a partner of the Carlyle Group, the investment firm that employs the current president’s father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush.


The 2002 Help America Vote Act: Bush administration spreads DRE voting

After the theft of the 2000 election, the Bush administration tried to blunt opposition to its undemocratic installation by passing a voting reform act. The bill, titled Help America Vote Act (HAVA), finally passed in October 2002, shortly before the 2002 election cycle. It rallied the support of several liberal political organizations, notably Public Citizen and the League of Women Voters.

The legislation requires that electronic voting systems be in place for the next presidential election of 2004. It includes $4 billion in funding for states to replace voting equipment—funds that would go straight from Congress and the Bush administration to their backers in the voting machinery industry. The bill did not directly indicate which voting machinery should be adopted. However, the amount of funding it provided per precinct—$3,200—was enough to fund DRE machines (which cost $3,000-$4,500), but not optical scanners, the main competitors of DREs. Optical scanners, in which voters fill out bubble sheets, cost $4,500-$6,000 apiece and are less accessible to the handicapped.

Moreover, although HAVA specified that voting machinery should meet certain standards, these standards have not yet been published due to the failure of the Republican-controlled Congress to appoint a commission. The standards may not be in place until 2006, at which point states will already be under obligation to have purchased new equipment. Other legal loopholes exploited by the voting machine companies include selling machines that have the capacity to print out paper ballots after the election is finished as machines that “create a paper trail.” However, as these machines often do not print out ballots that the voter himself inspects, this distinction is specious.

States are still in the process of attempting to reach HAVA compliance, and information on what systems will be in use during the elections is spotty. However, 36 states have accepted HAVA funds and plan to replace substantial portions of their voting equipment. Three states (Alabama, Alaska, and Maryland) have not applied for HAVA funding, but Maryland is considering updating its equipment to all-Diebold DRE voting with no paper trail features. Eleven states—Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia—have not yet decided whether to apply for HAVA funds.


Security flaws in DRE voting

A bitter controversy has emerged over the reliability and security of DRE voting. DRE voting systems have many proponents: voting systems corporations and their backers, handicapped organizations that view DRE voting as more accessible, and liberal groups claiming concern for possible disenfranchisement of poorer voters as a result of using antiquated machinery. However, work by a large number of people—investigative journalists, computer security professionals and students, and voting industry workers—has shown that current DRE voting systems have massive and critical security flaws.

Not least among these are the risk of computer fraud by the voting industry itself. Although counties require companies’ software and machinery to pass tests, there is no way to prove that the company uses that same software on election day. In fact, Diebold has already been caught secretly switching code after its machines had been tested in Alameda County, California, according to a November 6 story in the Oakland Tribune. Diebold workers also reported that the company switched software in Georgia between tests and the 2002 elections.

These concerns are compounded by the fact that most DRE systems—including all ES&S machines—have internal modems connecting them to external computers. Hackers able to decipher voting machinery code or voting industry programmers could thus issue instructions to the voting machines during or after the elections, after testing of the machines had taken place.

David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University, commented: “The ability to install patches or new software that wasn’t certified has many risks, including the introduction of new bugs and more opportunities for tampering. It is even more risky if different patches can be installed at the last minute in particular jurisdictions. This opens the possibility of customized tampering by people who know exactly which races they want to affect, or bugs that are even less likely to be caught because they occur only in a small number of locations. Of course, even if the certified code is frozen, it is easy to think of ways that undetectable back-doors could be installed in the software so that someone at the election site could choose the winner of the election.”

Perhaps the most damning revelation came in January 2003: voting activists discovered that much of Diebold’s code for its election machinery had been available for an unspecified amount of time on a public, insecure ftp server. Anyone who knew about the server could thus download and examine the code, or even modify it and send it back to the Diebold server. According to blackboxvoting.com, the available files included hardware and software specifications, the central vote-counting program, and “replacement files” for Diebold and Windows software supporting the vote-counting program. Blackboxvoting.com later revealed that Sequoia files were also available on a public ftp server.

Some of the available Diebold files were particularly damaging from the point of view of computer security: they included diagrams of communications links, passwords, encryption keys, testing protocols and simulators.

Computer scientists at Johns Hopkins and Rice universities published an analysis of sections of the publicly available Diebold code. It is available at http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf. The report found many substantial flaws in Diebold’s DRE technology. Firstly, voters validate their identity by presenting a “smart card” electronic identity card that turns itself off once the voter has voted. However, the report found that it would be simple and inexpensive to buy a similar card and program it to allow a voter to vote as many times as he wanted. Poll workers would have similar opportunities to directly and unverifiably tamper with vote totals.

The report also found that the transmission systems between voting machines and central computers were non-encrypted, allowing for easy modifications of vote totals by hackers while such messages are in transit. It noted that the use in the election programming of C++, a programming language known for its relative vulnerability to hacking, indicated the company’s unserious approach to computer security.

Perhaps most importantly, the report found “no evidence of any change-control process that might restrict a developer’s ability to insert arbitrary patches to the code. Absent such processes, a malevolent developer could easily make changes to the code that would create vulnerabilities to be later exploited on Election Day.”

Diebold’s response to the charges was to claim that one of the report’s authors, Avi Rubin, had a conflict of interest, as he held stock in a smaller, rival voting-machinery company, and to threaten lawsuits against web sites posting its code for evaluation. The state of Maryland, which is preparing to equip itself solely with Diebold electoral machinery, hired SAIC, a defense contractor with CIA ties, to evaluate the security of its software. SAIC’s heavily redacted public report agreed with most of the Johns Hopkins/Rice report’s technical findings, but speciously argued that its understanding of Diebold’s source code was flawed and that the state of Maryland’s “voting environment” would prevent any vote-tampering.

Key questions, to which there are still no definite answers, include: Was this remarkable breach of security a complete oversight, or were there elements inside Diebold who deliberately allowed the files to be placed where outside operatives could find them? Who accessed the Diebold files? What, if any, changes were made? More generally: Do right-wing political operatives in the US now have the ability to electronically fix elections by tampering with voting software?

What is crucial for him to know is how easily they can be tampered with.
Paper trails only come in play in the event of a recount, and you saw how far a recount got us in Ohio.

[Amaryllis]

5. Great post. The ISSUE, however, is getting Dem legislators and public

aware of the connections. We KNOW they are there. Intesting how you always find the truth when you follow the money. HAve you seen this? We should be handing this out and sending to everyone and spreading it all over the web:

20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the US

http://nightweed.com/printableusavotefacts.html

Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold


2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html


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

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html


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."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml

http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886


5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html


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.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26

http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx

http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php


7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm

http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html


8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html


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.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html


10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm


11. Diebold is based in Ohio.

http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm


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.

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml


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.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf


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.

http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf


15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.

http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html


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 here: http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov.)

http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190


17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml


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

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html

http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm

http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html

http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm


19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10544-2004Oct29.html


20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.

http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm

http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html

http://uscountvotes.org/


NOTE: Please copy the above list and distribute freely!
LET THE FACTS BE KNOWN! Thank you!

[Al-CIAda]

14. Resourceful post! -eom

[Amaryllis]

15. Thanks. See post #6 for more.

[luaptifer]

17. don't forget Triad & Rapps of Xenia Ohio --> also in Florida 2000

i still have not determined whether the Rapps of Ohio are related to the self-recused Judge Stephen A. Rapp of Palm Beach County but a few odd coincidences there:

----
Rapp's bad rap

<snip>
State Circuit Judge Stephen Rapp recused himself from a handful of cases brought against Florida by voters in Palm Beach County. Rapp, a Republican, had been accused of saying on Election Day that he would "do my part" to see that Vice President Al Gore was defeated. He is also said to have made unsavory comments about New York Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton and to have called voters who marked the wrong candidate on the county's butterfly ballot "stupid." After recusing himself, Rapp vociferously denied the allegations.

http://archive.salon.com/politics/trail/2000/11/13/trail_mix/

---
surely unrelated but odd coincidence given the family names and connection to votescam:

Great GAG Gift! Official 2000 Palm Beach County Butterfly Ballot for sale by none other than the Ohio Rapp family http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/25/122526/50

i understand that Rapp Systems had a role in the FL elections but have not found that connection beyond apparently at one time having run some aspect of FL elections through their electionsonthe.net website

http://www.electionsonthe.net/

------

one of pitts' articles on triad quotes conyers and states this:

Third, it is important to recognize that the companies implicated in the wrongdoing, Triad and its affiliates, are the leading suppliers of voting machines involving the counting of paper ballots and punch cards in the critical states of Ohio and Florida. Triad is controlled by the Rapp family, and its founder Tod A. Rapp has been a consistent contributor to Republican causes.4 A Triad affiliate, Psephos corporation, supplied the notorious butterfly ballot used in Palm Beach County, Florida, in the 2000 presidential election.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121604Z.shtml

--------------

and

Wayback Machine ID's Triad Gov Systems in Florida 2000 Election :-)

Certified Voting Systems Used in Florida


Election Systems & Software, Inc.
11208 John Galt Boulevard, Omaha, Nebraska 68137
Phone (800) AIS-VOTE [phone]

The ES&S Model 115 and/or The ES&S Model 315
marksense; central tabulation


16 Counties

Bradford Hendry Okeechobee
Charlotte Jackson Polk
Franklin Lafayette Suwannee
Gadsden Lake Taylor
Gulf Levy
Hamilton Liberty

The ES&S OPTECH III-P Eagle & OPTECH IV-C
marksense; precinct and central tabulation


8 Counties

Bay Holmes (III-P) Santa Rosa
Clay Orange Washington (III-P)
Escambia St. Johns




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Global Election Systems, Inc.
1611 Wilmeth Road, McKinney, Texas 75069
Phone [phone]

Election System 2000 AccuVote
marksense; precinct and/or central tabulation


14 Counties

Alachua (DV) Leon Seminole
Brevard Manatee St. Lucie
Citrus Monroe Volusia
Flagler Okaloosa Walton
Hernando Putnam




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Triad Governmental Systems, Inc.
358 South Monroe Street, Xenia, Ohio 45385
Phone [phone]

ElecTab Ballot Tabulation System
punch card; Votomatic (VM) or DataVote (DV) type, central tabulation


9 Counties

Columbia (DV) Gilchrist (DV) Jefferson (DV)
DeSoto (DV) Hardee (DV) Madison (DV)
Dixie (DV) Indian River (VM) Wakulla (DV)

<snip>

http://web.archive.org/web/20001109223815/election.dos.state.fl.us/votemeth/cvs.shtml

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. Try googling Sandra Mortham

She is a former Secretary of State in Florida and was Jeb's original running mate. She had to drop out because of some scandle involving the misuse of government funds.

Mortham went on to become a lobbyist for one of the big Voting Machine companies and was instrumential in getting paperless EV equipment into most of Southern FL.

This gal is a real piece of work and is as corrupt as they come.

[roenyc]

8. all so amazing

that it was allowed to go on so long and still going on.

[Amaryllis]

9. Interesting how you ALWAYS find the truth when you follow the money...

[DoYouEverWonder]

10. And that there is so much corruption

Kerry was right, this is the crookedest bunch we've ever seen.

[roenyc]

12. Yes those fateful words!! Nt.

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. Former SOS Mortham was the lobbyist for ESS & FL Assoc of Counties

Can you spell 'conflict of interest'? Can you spell 'rigged elections'? Well good ol' Sandy is just the gal for the job. Former running mate of Jeb Bush, she had to bow out because of a money scandal while she was SOS. Well it seems she's done quiet well serving BushCo in her private life. I'm sure she's made a small fortune off of her dealings.



All of the big counties up for grabs, however, would soon go with touch-screens,and most of those would go with a machine made by an Omaha-based company called Election Systems & Software, or E.S.&S., which had the good political sense to hire Sandra Mortham, former Florida secretary of state and implementer of the ex-felon purge campaign by DBT, as its chief lobbyist in the state.

Big money was at stake - tens of millions of dollars - and so, tragically, the push for clean elections with new voting machines became a classic exercise in murky politics.

Shortly before signing on with E.S.&S., Mortham signed on as a lobbyist for the Florida Association of Counties(FAC).

On June 21, 2001,the association formally endorsed E.S.&S.'s iVotronic and began urging the state's undecided counties to buy it.

http://www.thewe.cc/contents/more/archive2004/october/war_2004_october_images_2.html

[roenyc]

13. Well well well, thats just peachy

So, in our next election - i guess we should organize our own mini type of election, as people come out of the polls we should give them a peice of paper and ask them to put their vote on it and place it in a damn lock box. only dem voters are necessary. who cares about the others.

perhaps then they would beleive the exit polls?

[luaptifer]

16. relationship Evote Machine Cos, NASED & ITAs discussed here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x262488#272290

and here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x262488#272223

important connections identified originally by the mistaken revelation by IRS of Company donations!

[Amaryllis]

18. kick

[NVMojo]

19. I voted on a brand new Sequoia with printer and our county clerk

found 271 UNCOUNTED votes on three machine cartridges a month after the election ...so much for a printer record, especially if there is no way to cross reference the totals to make sure everyone's vote was counted before it was certified.

[kuozzman]

20. I didn't think the printers actually "certified" anything-now I know.....

I'm going to ask my Dad(See post #4) about that, and a few other things.

[Amaryllis]

21. kick