Friday, December 22, 2006

Land Of The Free?

No matter your ideology or political slant, there are real problems with the mechanisms by which we choose out leaders.

Credit to Angry Girl and 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.

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

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

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...?

The sources and original posting can be found here

9 Comments:

Blogger Jill said...

Oh man, why did you have to go and get me all pissed off, right at the start of Christmas vacation? I was just settling down with a big bowl of denial too. :)

I guess it's always better to know, but sometimes I'd just rather not. Sigh.

10:45 AM  
Blogger none said...

The machines are a mess. There is a from California trying to expose the whole thing.

here is one of his posts:

http://thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=222860

4:14 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Hey, you know my BS voting story. At least I had a paper trail. That everyone in the f-ing room could see!

10:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So you're telling, Stucco, that politician's are self-serving powermongers who only have their own self-interests at the bottom of their black and oily hearts and would lie, cheat and/or steal to ensure that they stay in the positions of power that they've already lied, cheated and/or stole to achieve?

Well crap. I'm gonna have to take them off my Exmas card list now.

6:42 AM  
Blogger Scott from Oregon said...

You broke the cardinal rule, stucco...

No politics between Soltice and New Year's...

For that, I say we vote on proper punishment.

I'll count.

11:27 AM  
Blogger Stucco said...

Thank you sir! May I have another?

11:46 AM  
Blogger slaghammer said...

Apparently, we are not capable of understanding the complexity of your typical legislator’s lofty responsibilities. I know there are more current and sensitive ways to put this but I am a product of the sixties and seventies and I have to be blunt, they think we are a bunch of godd*mn retards and we cannot be trusted to make the right choices. While there may be some empirical evidence validating that theory, I believe we are on the path to reverting the chain of command back to its default setting. You know, the setting where they f*cking work for us and not the other way around.

10:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Er...Merry Exlax there, Stucco-me-boy!

9:18 AM  
Blogger Lexcen said...

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

--From Hamlet (I, iv, 90)

12:13 PM  

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