- When will the Democrats wake up and smell the fix? There
is a reason why George Bush and his cronies wear a perpetual smirk on their
faces. There's a reason for their cocksure confidence. They may not win
every election, but if they don't, it will because they chose not to. For
nothing is clearer than this, Republicans dominate voting technology companies
in America. And they have foreign partners.
-
- A handful of Republican corporations and British-owned
companies control the vote count in California and across the nation. Britain
and it's offshore territories not only shelter corporate America from taxes
due to the U.S. Treasury, the Brits are also providing a haven for vote-counting
companies like Accenture, the former Andersen Consulting, currently located
in Bermuda and slated to count the military online vote in 2004. It's all
enough to make one wonder who won the Revolutionary War... American patriots
or the British and American Tories?
-
- And as California Governor Davis goes, so may go other
elected officials, maybe even some Republicans. Any elected official from
either party who has crossed President Bush should start worrying.
-
- For those who are still living in the Valley of Denial,
and think that the California recount is a fair election, here is the breakdown.
On a geographical basis, British-based Sequoia takes the lead in the vote
count in California counties. Twenty-one counties use Sequoia voting technology,
15 counties use ES&S, 14 - Diebold, 6 - DMF Associates, and 2 counties
use PollStar. On the basis of registered voters, ES&S takes the lead
with 7,305,680 voters, Sequoia - 3,682,051, Diebold - 2,412,971, PollStar
- 1,308,789, and DMF Associates - 593,978.
-
- ES&S, the nation's largest voting company, is owned
by the Omaha World Herald Company and has solid ties to the Republican
Party. ES&S claims on their website that they tabulated "56% of
the U.S. national vote for the past four presidential elections."
Diebold Election Systems, is the second largest company with 33-35% of
the electronic vote, according to a Diebold spokesperson. Walden O'Dell,
Diebold's chief executive, recently wrote a fund-raising letter for the
re-election of President George Bush. Then there's Sequoia. It is owned
by De La Rue, a British-based company and the world's largest commercial
security printer and papermaker. They also own a 20% stake in Camelot,
the operator of the Great Britain's National Lottery. Want to take any
bets on who wins the California recall, the U.S. presidency in the 2004
election, and maintains control of both houses of Congress?
-
- Of course, not all of the counties will use company technicians
to program their software for the upcoming election. They may, like Los
Angeles County, use county employees or independent contractors to do the
job. Even if "Ralph from the county," programs the software...
who is this guy? Why should voters trust him to count their votes? What
ever happened to public oversight of the vote count? With voting machines
counting the vote, what do poll watchers watch? What do Federal Observers
observe? How do they enforce the Voting Rights Act? The technicians who
program these machines can be manipulating votes right, left, and center...and
nobody would be the wiser.
-
- All the studies that show how well or poorly different
voting systems work, such as the 2001 CalTech/MIT Report, do not take into
account deliberate vote fraud. The researchers study "residual"
or lost votes, meaning undervotes and overvotes. Even the October 2001
GAO report says, "...FEC generally agrees with most of our observations
and recommendations, including that human factors are not being addressed
in the revised voting equipment standards and that FEC needs to accelerate
their development in future iterations of the standards."
-
- A "human factor" is the accidental or deliberate
manipulation of votes by humans.
-
- The technological take over of the vote began over 100
years ago with the introduction of lever machines. Today, we're facing
a paperless electronic and Internet voting process controlled by Republicans
and the British and only god knows who else. It is making a mockery of
our elections. A paper ballot, a pen, a ballot box, and a local hand-count
is the simple technology that most nations use to elect their leaders.
Our use of complex technology has taken public oversight completely out
of the process, making our elections completely vulnerable.
-
- And it doesn't really matter whether private corporations
or public servants control the technology. Any use of mechanical or electronic
voting technology is an open invitation to vote fraud and technical failure.
Any use of sophisticated voting technology concentrates the risk of fraud
or failure into the hands of those who control it.
-
- If we're going to fix this mess, we need to fix it right.
The machines must go. And so must the Brits, the Republicans, and anyone
else who seeks to control American elections.
-
-
-
- Lynn Landes is publisher of <http://www.ecotalk.org/>Ecotalk
(www.EcoTalk.org) and a news reporter for DUTV in Philadelphia, PA. For
the past year she has been covering voting technology and democracy issues.
Formerly Lynn was a radio show host for WDVR in New Jersey and a regular
commentator for a BBC radio program. She can be reached at (215) 629-3553
/ lynnlandes@earthlink.net
|