Problem

Explosive

The voting machines in St. Johns County, Florida has a paper audit trail. They are reliable optical scanning machines and any tallies can be checked by hand-counting the paper ballots that are marked by the voters and inserted into the scanner. However, many counties in Florida and many entire states are now voting with "touch screen machines" that have no audit trail whatsoever and that have already proven to be vulnerable to tampering, pre-programming, and other mischief.

The essay below explains the situation. After you read it, we hope you will join with us in working to get HR 2239 "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003" out of the House Administration Committee where it has been bottled up since May, and out on the House floor where it can be voted on and passed. We must see this bill passed into law so we can have fair and honest elections in 2004. The Republic cannot withstand another presidential "selection" by a partisan few--whether they are judges or owners of voting machine companies.

It's a shell game, with money, companies and corporate brands switching in a blur of buyouts and bogus fronts. It's a sinkhole, where mobbed-up operators, paid-off public servants, crazed Christian fascists, CIA shadow-jobbers, war-pimping arms dealers -- and presidential family members -- lie down together in the slime. It's a hacker's dream, with pork-funded, half-finished, secretly programmed computer systems installed without basic security standards by politically partisan private firms, and protected by law from public scrutiny. It's how the United States, the "world's greatest democracy," casts its votes. And it's why George W. Bush will almost certainly be the next president of the United States -- no matter what the people of the United States might want.

The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players -- Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia -- with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation, coming on strong. These companies -- all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid -- have been given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nationwide by the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems -- many using "touch-screen" technology that leaves no paper trail at all -- are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, Johns Hopkins and other universities.

The technology had a trial run in the 2002 midterm elections. In Georgia, serviced by new Diebold systems, a popular Democratic governor and senator were both unseated in what the media called "amazing" upsets, with results showing vote swings of up to 16 percent from the last pre-ballot polls. In computerized Minnesota, former Vice President Walter Mondale -- a replacement for popular incumbent Paul Wellstone, who died days before the vote -- was also defeated in a large last-second vote swing. Convenient "glitches" in Florida saw an untold number of votes intended for the Democratic candidate registering instead for Governor Jeb "L'il Brother" Bush. A Florida Democrat who lost a similarly "glitched" local election went to court to have the computers examined -- but the case was thrown out by a judge who ruled that the innards of America's voting machines are the "trade secrets" of the private companies who make them.

Who's behind these private companies? It's hard to tell: The corporate lines -- even the bloodlines -- of these "competitors" are so intricately mixed. For example, at Diebold -- whose corporate chief, Wally O'Dell, a top Bush fundraiser, has publicly committed himself to "delivering" his home state's votes to Bush next year -- the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob's brother, Todd, is a top executive at "rival" ES&S. The brothers were originally staked in the vote-count business by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing "steering group" stacked with Bushist faithful.

Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the extremist "Christian Reconstructionist" movement, which openly advocates a theocratic takeover of American democracy, placing the entire society under the "dominion" of "Christ the King." This "dominion" includes the death penalty for homosexuals, exclusion of citizenship for non-Christians, stoning of sinners and -- we kid you not -- slavery, "one of the most beneficent of Biblical laws."

Ahmanson also has major holdings in ES&S, whose former CEO is Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. When Hagel ran for office, his own company counted the votes; needless to say, his initial victory was reported as "an amazing upset." Hagel still has a million-dollar stake in the parent company of ES&S. In Florida, Jeb Bush's first choice for a running mate in his 1998 gubernatorial race was ES&S lobbyist Sandra Mortham, who made a mint installing the machines that counted Jeb's votes.

Sequoia also has a colorful history, most recently in Louisiana, where it was the center of a massive corruption case that sent top state officials to jail for bribery, most of it funneled through Mob-connected front firms. Sequoia executives were also indicted, but escaped trial after giving immunized testimony against state officials. The British-owned company's corporate parent is private equity firm Madison Dearborn -- a partner of the Carlyle Group, where George Bush I makes millions trolling the world for war pork, privatizations and sweetheart deals with government insiders.

Meanwhile, the shadowy defense contractor SAIC has jumped into the vote-counting game, both directly and through spinoffs by its top brass, including Admiral Bill Owens, former military aide to Dick Cheney and Carlyle honcho Frank Carlucci, and ex-CIA chief Robert Gates. SAIC's history of fraud charges and security lapses in its electronic systems hasn't prevented it from becoming one of the largest Pentagon and CIA contractors -- and will doubtless pose little obstacle to its entrance into election engineering.

The mad rush to install unverifiable computer voting is driven by the Help America Vote Act, signed by Bush last year. The chief lobbying group pushing for the act was a consortium of arms dealers -- those disinterested corporate citizens -- including Northop-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin. The bill also mandates that all states adopt the computerized "ineligible voter purge" system that Jeb used to eliminate 91,000 eligible black voters from the Florida rolls in 2000. The Republican-run private company that accomplished this electoral miracle, ChoicePoint, is bagging the lion's share of the new Bush-ordered purge contracts.

The unelected Bush Regime now controls the government, the military, the judiciary -- and the machinery of democracy itself. Absent some unlikely great awakening by the co-opted dullards of the corporate media, next November the last shreds of a genuine American republic will disappear -- at the push of a button.

Annotations

E-Voting: How it Can Put the Wrong Candidate in Office Common Dreams, Sept. 3, 2003

The Theft of Your Vote is Just a Chip Away Thom Hartmann, July 31, 2003

How George W. Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election Infernal Press, September 2003

Now Your Vote is the Property of a Private Corporation Thom Hartmann, March 11, 2003

The Diebold AccuVote TS Should be Decertified USENEX Security Symposium, Aug. 6, 2003

Who Counts the Votes? Southern Exposure, Winter 2002/2003

Florida Invests $24 Million in Wireless Voting Machines Wireless News Factor, Jan. 31, 2002

Diebold Internal Mail Confirms U.S. Vote Vulnerabilities Scoop, Sept. 12,2002

Voting Machine Controversy as Diebold Chief Backs Bush Cleveland Plain Dealer, Aug. 28, 2003

The Voting Machine Fiasco: SAIC, VoteHere and Diebold Online Journal, Aug. 20, 2003

Hacking Democracy? Salon.com, Feb. 20, 2003

Possible Flaw Triggers Electronic Voting Concerns Houston Chronicle, Sept. 11, 2003

Piecing it Together Black Box Voting, Aug. 25, 2003

Bay of Pigs 2000: The November Surprise Madcow Morning News, Dec. 26, 2000

Slavery Under God's Laws The Institute for Christian Economics,Stoning: Integral to Commandment Against Murder The Institute for Christian Economics, World Conquest: The Obligation of Christian Politics The Changing of the Guard, Dominion Press, An Anthology of Reconstructist Thought Christian Reconstructionism, November 2002

Judicial Warfare: Christian Reconstructionism and its Blueprint for Dominion Crown Rights Press, 2003

British Firm Buys Controlling Interest in Sequoia Voting Systems Eastbay Business Times, May 29, 2003

A High-Tech Ambush Eco Talk, Oct. 29, 2002

Louisiana Election Commissioner Pleads Guilty in Kickback Scandal The Oak Ridger, Nov. 28, 2000

Pipeline Partnership Take Under: Madison Dearborn and Carlyle Meter Reader Energy Stock Analysis, April 24, 2003