Gość: abc Madrosci
IP: *.sympatico.ca
08.12.02, 22:57
American Free Press Secret Group Manipulates Vote Machines
The widespread use of electronic voting machines has severely undermined the
integrity of elections in the United States. Behind the companies that make
the voting machines is a small and secretive group of men, including a well-
known U.S. senator.
Exclusive to American Free Press
By Christopher Bollyn
The mid-term elections have been described as “revolutionary” due to the
unusual success of Republican candidates while a president from the same
party occupied the White House.
However, the upset election results that heralded the Republican revolution
have been accompanied by a credibility gap because of the historic devolution
in how Americans cast their votes.
As a result of the 2000 election fiasco in Florida, expensive electronic
voting machines have replaced paper ballot voting systems in a growing number
of jurisdictions across the United States.
However, the electronic touch-screen voting and ballot-counting machines lack
the transparency and credibility of hand-counted paper ballots.
Furthermore, troubling revelations about the people who are invested in the
companies that make these voting machines raise a host of serious questions
about the condition of the democratic franchise in the United States.
The companies that design, build, and operate most of the voting machines
currently being used are privately held and secretive. Before the 2000
elections, when this reporter tried to learn who owned Omaha-based Electronic
Systems and Software (ES&S), the largest voting machine company in the United
States, the information was simply not available.
ES&S, whose motto is “Better elections every day,” claims to have counted 100
million ballots in the 2000 election and 56 percent of the vote in the last
four presidential elections. However, company officials have repeatedly
refused to discuss the security of their voting machines or divulge who owns
and directs the company.
Two independent writers, Bev Harris of Talion.com and journalist Lynn Landes
of EcoTalk.org, have investigated the voting machine companies operating in
the United States and have discovered a number of political connections to
the Republican Party and a well-known senator from Nebraska.
THE OMAHA CONNECTION
According to Nebraska’s Elections Office, ES&S is the only voting machine
company certified to count votes in the state. A small percentage of the vote
in Nebraska is still hand-counted.
ES&S was formed in 1997 by a merger of Omaha-based American Information
Systems (AIS) and Dallas-based Business Records Corp. (BRC). BRC was
partially owned by Cronus Industries, a company with connections to the Hunt
brothers from Texas, as well as other individuals and entities, including
Rothschild, Inc.
In 1997, American Information Systems was an unincorporated, wholly-owned
subsidiary of the Omaha World-Herald Company according to a Department of
Justice press release about the merger of AIS with BRC. American Information
Systems’ 1996 sales in all of its product lines were about $14.3 million.
Nebraska-born Charles T. “Chuck” Hagel moved to Omaha in 1992 to become
chairman of AIS and the McCarthy Group, a private investment bank, Harris
told AFP.
AIS was the voting machine company that counted the votes by which Hagel was
elected to the Senate in 1996. Hagel had only resigned as CEO of AIS in 1995.
Josh Denney, spokesman for Sen. Hagel’s Washington office, told AFP that
Hagel had been chairman of the board at AIS “for about a year.” Denney said
that Hagel had resigned from the AIS board on March 15, 1995, but had
continued to serve as president of McCarthy and Co., until 1996.
Today, Hagel has investments in the renamed Mc Carthy Group worth between $1
million and $5 million, according to documents published by Harris on her web
site.
Because the McCarthy Group reportedly owns some 35 percent of ES&S, Harris
has raised the matter of Hagel’s investment in a company that counts the
votes in Nebraska. Omaha World-Herald reportedly owns about 45 percent of
ES&S.
Lawyers representing ES&S have recently asked Harris to remove the documents
and information from her web site. Harris, however, has not removed the
material, saying that voters need to know who owns the companies that make
voting machines to avoid any possible conflict-of-interest issues.
Two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich, founded AIS in the 1980s. Today Bob is
president of Diebold Election Systems, while Todd is a vice president at
ES&S.
Diebold Election Systems, Inc., a wholly owned operating subsidiary of
Diebold, Inc., recently won a $54 million contract to overhaul Georgia’s
election system technology.
Georgia became the first state in the country to implement a uniform
statewide computerized touch-screen voting system.
The Diebold system was sold to voters in Georgia as a “state-of-the-art
system” that is “more accurate, convenient and accessible to voters.”
The electronic touch-screen system does not provide a verifiable paper trail,
which degrades the credibility of the results.
