20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA

[theweaselking]

20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA
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/04280 04landes.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/04280 04landes.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/04280 04landes.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/main63 32436.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/2004/03/0 03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031 1004fitrakis.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& p;file=article&sid=26
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News& p;file=article&s i d=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/04280 04landes.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/pfin ndex.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 senior managers 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, Diebold’s Senior Vice-President and senior programmer on
Diebold’s central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony
theft in the first degree.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf


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. 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
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/main63 32436.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.rise4news.net/extravotes.html
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&na ame=News&file=article&sid=950
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&na ame=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/7 7628725.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10544-20 004Oct29.html


20.Serious voting anomalies in Florida - again always favoring Bush -
have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending
further investigation.
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/governmen nt/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html
http://www.uscountvotes.org/
Posted by Claire on February 15, 2005 at 10:15 AM
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Comes from a comment here, which is an article about how all the exit polls were off by an impossible amount, in the same direction, everywhere there wasn't a paper trail.

Comments

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

Do you wish to vote for:

a) John Kerry (D) ?
b) George W. Bush (R) ?

a). You have chosen to vote for George W. Bush. Thank you for voting.
.
.
.

b). You have chosen to vote for George W. Bush. Thank you for voting.

[ryusen.livejournal.com]

unfortunately, none of that would stand up in a court of law. the best we can hope for is stricter control over voting and auditing, so that such things can not happen anymore.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

While we're wishing, can I have a pony?

The people who control the law making process are the ones who have the most to lose by making sure changes happen. After all the bullshit in 2000, they said they were going to fix things. Nothing got fixed in the interim Congressional elections. Things were worse. Go ahead, see how many "surprise" Republican winners there were. The only one they knew they couldn't beat - Paul Wellstone - they just flat-out killed. The presidential election was the crown jewel. A giant crock of shit, with the media echoing this phantom poll that said people voted for "moral values." And it's only going to get worse. I mean, for Christ's sake, do you really think this is going to stop? More Republicans will be elected by hook or by crook, the existing Republicans will play it as "the American people voting for moral values," wash, rinse, repeat, kiss checks and balances goodbye, say hello to a one party state. Any token Democrats that remain will be people like Joe Lieberman who have no fucking spine or idea of what the words "opposition party" mean. If you seriously can't see the writing on the wall, I don't know what to tell you.

Why the fuck do you think I've given up?

[ryusen.livejournal.com]

you want to talk wishing, try wishing that you can build a solid case with that kind of circumstantial evidence. if you're going to prove something, you need something more solid.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

But here's the thing:
#1: While this is only circumstantial, it's pretty damning circumstantial evidence, and enough circumstantial evidence *does* convict.

#2: You'd certainly agree there's cause to *investigate* this, since this is so compelling an argument that, circumstantially and using THE SAME ARGUMENT THEY THEMSELVES USED TO INTERFERE IN THE UKRAINE, there was definitely tampering, right? So why is it that you blithely accept that *the people who should be investigated* are saying "No, there shouldn't be an investigation, because we run everything and we'd have to start one"?

[ryusen.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, i think there needs to be an investigation, but more importantly i think changes need to be made to the system to give better audit trails in the future. by the time an investigation will be approved of, funded, conducted, and concluded, 2 more elections might have happened, before we can truly prove that there was tampering with the ballots. changes to the voting machines can happen before the next election.
i'm trying to be pragmatic here.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

Riiiight. It's all just a big coincidence. Election 2000, where the state in contention just happened to be the one where the candidate's brother was governor and his campaign manager was the Secretary of State and therefore in charge of voter rolls. Election 2002, where we had an incumbant Democrat who lost limbs in Vietnam lose in a surprise finish to a Republican who called him unpatriotic, amongst other "coincidences" like Wellstone - someone who was about to whip the crap out of Bush's hand-picked opposition - dying in an accident. Election 2004, where people decided to accept that exit polls - a perfectly valid and decent judge of election results up until now - were no longer valid unless, of course, it was in the Ukraine. Then there's all the stuff cited above. All just a coincidence. Not a clear pattern of deliberate and growing theft of the sanctity of our vote, just a big ol' coincidence.

Circumstantial evidence piled on top of circumstantial evidence piled on top of circumstantial evidence piled on top of circumstantial evidence piled on top of circumstantial evidence is no longer circumstantial evidence, it's a pattern.

[ryusen.livejournal.com]

it doesn't matter what happened, only what you can prove happened. as i said to John, i think it's more important to try and prevent this from happening in the future than to try and change the past.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

Prove? It's already been proven. Exit poll data being off in the Ukraine was all the proof they (and the Bush Administration, I might add) needed to call shenanigans. They re-did the whole election because of it. Even if not a single word of what John originally posted is right, the exit poll data was proof enough for Bush, except when it involved him.

[ryusen.livejournal.com]

Exactly.. it's not enough proof here. Even if it was, what would you do? redo the whole election? guess what.. they STILL have insecure/unreliable machines, that can easily be hacked to count th eballots. the more important thing is to fix the system.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

It was enough proof for the Ukraine. It was enough proof for Bush in the Ukraine. If I shot someone and they found a gun with my prints on it, me saying "that's not enough proof" while simultaneously saying that it was in another court case would not only be hypocritical, but also would not change the fact that the gun was proof of my wrongdoing.

Being that this kind of shit hasn't happened except in the last three elections, it's certainly enough proof for me. Seems like circumstantial = coincidental. This is not coincidental or circumstantial, unless the circumstances are "all the time" and we're redefining the word "coincidence" as "that which is expected to happen."

You're also missing the point that the very people who hijacked the last three elections consider this a fixed system already. They feel that more easily hacked machines (which they won't admit to) are the answer, and call it "circumstantial evidence" when allegations of fraud are raised. Hence my original wish for a pony and lack of belief in the government to put a check on this stuff.

[ryusen.livejournal.com]

Either way, i still think trying to fix the system is a more realistic fight than trying to overturn the previous elections.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Without overturning the election, you can't fix the system, because without overturning the election, the people who defrauded the election have the ability to veto any investigation or change.

And, hey, look, THEY'RE DOING IT.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I thought that's what I said.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

I'm not trying to overturn the elections, I just want people to admit that they were fraudulent. As for trying to fix the system, trying to fix any system when the people who do the fixing benefit most from it being broken is a fool's errand. I'm not trying to do anything. I've read the writing on the wall. They're legislating my point of view into extinction. "Vote 'em out!" is no longer an option.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yes, you damn well redo the whole election, with *STANDARDISED PAPER BALLOTS*, hand-counted by people from *all* parties.

Doesn't it strike you as odd? The only results that weren't WAY out of whack in direction of THE PEOPLE COUNTING THE VOTES were the ones where people could actually get to see the votes counted?

[ryusen.livejournal.com]

Yes it strikes me as odd, but i don't think there will be a redo, unless there's an actual smoking gun found.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

This is a smoking gun. There won't be a re-do because no one's going to admit that it's a smoking gun. They poo-poo'd the exit polling results as though exit polls have been that off since the beginning of exit polling. The Bush Administration practices (very sucessfully, I might add) the "ignore it and it will go away" solution. They know that the majority of Americans have about a 10 second attention span. How do I know this? When they decided that another country that had the exact same thing happen had solid exit poll data, much like it was here prior to ... oh, I don't know... 2000, nobody said "Hey, wait a minute here..."

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that my fellow citizens give a flying fuck about any of this.

Pam pam pam...

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

You say that like voting fraud doesn't have a long and glorious history in America. This is especially surprising coming from a Chicagoan like yourself.

I'm just waiting for the Iragi vote to be declared invalid because we don't like the result. In fact, I think I might drop a post on that very subject...

Re: Pam pam pam...

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

You say that like voting fraud doesn't have a long and glorious history in America.

Pardon me? I say that like voting fraud has such a long and glorious history in America that people don't consider it to be any big deal.