Who counts the votes?

[NMDemDist2]

However, the result, called the Help America Vote Act, may as well be called the Help America Vote Republican Act; one needn't have a conspiratorial bent of mind to understand why. One need only follow the money trail and ask the obvious question: Who stood to gain financially from this legislation?

The answer: Diebold, an Ohio-based manufacturer of touch-screen computerized voting machines. Diebold's CEO, Wally O'Dell, is a proud pioneer (read: he donated more than $100,000 to the GOP's reelection bid) who has publicly announced he "is committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." His company, in a Halliburton-like deal, received a lucrative government contract to manufacture 8 million of these touch-screen machines for the 2004 election (according to figures cited in The Progressive , 20 percent of America's voting machines are now touch screen; 31 percent optical scan; 24 percent punch-card; 15 percent lever; 1 percent paper ballots; the remainder "a combination").

To add to the inherently partisan worries, Diebold's machines are said to be easily hacked. According to one software engineer, "The security of a Diebold voting machine is inexcusable. It's not at all complicated. All you have to do is open Windows Explorer, locate the Diebold folder, double-click the Microsoft Access file and read, and modify, access to all votes recorded on that machine."

Most conveniently, Diebold's machines leave no paper trail. And attempts to examine or audit the machines have been thwarted by Diebold's contract language in the states where the machines are used ("proprietary trade secret").

As a friend of mine put it, "Help America vote? I think America is voting just fine. It's the accurate and honest counting of votes that is in dire need of help."

Joe Stalin figured this one out way back in 1935, long before Bill Gates or Wally O'Dell were born.

http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:60342