Sometimes I'm a slow study. When I read the first posts here at DU about Dan Rather's astonishing expose of the election theft industry (going back to 2000!)--I didn't quite get it. The summaries/comments were incomplete and somewhat off-focus, and I thought that it was just an attack on touchscreens (the paperless machines)--that is, the corporate and political establishment fallback position on the grave assault on our democracy that all current electronic voting systems represent: 'touchscreens bad; optiscans good.' (I thought it was just anti-touchscreen--I was wrong.)
I didn't have time, at that moment (the early reviews) to watch the actual Dan Rather report.
Now I have.
This is the most important journalistic effort in our lifetime, and perhaps in the history of our country. This is what journalism SHOULD BE. This is an AMAZING report, that exposes the profound corruption, secrecy, lies, deception, ass-covering, shoddy manufacturing, cheap, flawed components, and utter contempt for American voters that corporate privatization has inflicted on our election system, and that has nearly destroyed our democracy.
ES&S voting machines are manufactured in Manila in sweatshop conditions. Sweatshop for the workers (pittance wages), and literal sweatshop for the electronic machines: heat so bad that workers couldn't concentrate; no air conditioning.
Nice, huh? U.S. election theft machines ($3,000 a piece!) manufactured in SWEATSHOPS, to (s)elect Bushites who oppose labor rights!
But that's only the beginning.
After exposing the scandal of ES&S manufacturing of touchscreen voting machines--thousand of warped screens, due to inferior components and the heat (so that you don't know how your vote is registering), and ES&S's efforts to keep this out of the press--Rather points out that the supposed better alternative--the optiscans--ALSO have serious problems, including calibration problems (a half an inch off and you could be voting for the wrong candidate and not know it).
After the disaster in FL-13 in 2006 (ES&S touchscreens 'disappearing' 18,000 votes for Congress in Democratic areas, in an election 'won' by the Republican (natch!) by only 350 or so votes), the new Republican governor banned touchscreens and is converting the state to optiscans. (Touchscreens are paperless--no recount is possible; optiscans have a paper ballot, but the machines still contain "trade secret" code, as do the central tabulators, and the paper ballot is only as good as the recount/audit laws, which are worse than lousy in all states.)
Dan Rather points out that the Philippines itself has banned optiscans (after one troubled election with them). But guess what? (--Rather continues)--the optiscans ($$$$) that Florida will purchase to replace the touchscreens ($$$$) will be manufactured by the same private firm that screwed the state (and the country) with touchscreens--ES&S--and will continue to be manufactured in sweatshops in the Philippines, for the United States' election 'market.'
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This is just ONE example of the rot and corruption that corporations have wrought within our election system, in a very short amount of time (--basically, 2002 to 2004, and it is no accident that this wholesale corruption of the voting system parallels the Iraq War; the Congressional bills for fast-tracking e-voting and fast-tracking the invasion of Iraq were passed in the same month, October 2002).
Rather doesn't get into Diebold. That's a better known story. And he doesn't really have to. It's the same with all three major election theft corporations--secrecy, lies, corruption. And I'm glad he focused on ES&S (not yet a household word), and opened a whole new area of investigation--the outsourcing of our election system.
He then goes back in time to the 2000 election, and exposes something that none of us knew--equally as explosive as the ES&S revelations. Before I summarize it, let me just do a thumbnail on these three major election theft industry players, on their POLITICAL connections:
DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004";
ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; until recently, they were run by two brothers, Bob and Tod Urosevich. (Note: Diebold Election Systems, DES--in much disrepute, with profits falling--just isolated the elections division, probably to insulate Diebold from lawsuits, and changed its name to Premier Election Systems, PES.)
These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy.
SEQUOIA: The third major election theft industry player, which ALSO has Republican connections. Sequoia hired Republican Bill Jones, former Calif Secretary of State, and his chief aide, Alfie Charles, who SET UP e-voting in California, as salesmen to peddle Sequoia voting machines--in an egregious example of the highly corrupt practice of "revolving door" employment.
Dan Rather focuses on Sequoia's role in the "hanging chad" fiasco in Florida in 2000.
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It turns out that Sequoia knowingly provided inferior paper for the infamous punchcard ballots that--according to whistleblower workers, interviewed on screen, and named--caused the predictable, preventable problem of the "hanging chads" in the Florida 2000 recount. One workers says he thinks Sequoia did it to pave the way for conversion of our election system to the much more lucrative electronic voting machine 'market.' Others hint that the election was fixed, and that's how they did it--with inferior paper.
So, not only was the Florida vote counting fiasco used by the Bushites to create chaos and bump the matter up to a manipulable Supreme Court, but their buds at Sequoia caused the whole problem of the difficulty in counting!
Interesting--nobody has ever thought to ask WHY Florida had such trouble with "hanging chads"--at least not that I ever noticed. I certainly didn't think of it. Punchcards were used all over the country. No one had ever had this problem on such a scale before. I just assumed it was Freeptards in their typical bully brownshirt mode making something of nothing. Well, they did that, too. But the problem that gave them that opportunity, a) was unusual, and b) was deliberate.
It's the paper, stupid! Bad, inferior, stretch-distorted paper that caused misalignment and incomplete punches of the holes by which the votes are counted.
One worker (a woman) says they had always been proud of the high quality of punchcard ballots they turned out. The workers considered it an important product and were aware that this batch going to the Florida Democratic precincts was inferior. Another worker says, when the recount developed problems, they were told to immediately remove all evidence from the warehouses. Anything with Sequoia's or Boise Cascade's name on it was immediately and deliberately destroyed.
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Conclusion:
Dan Rather: "What's more important to you--knowing that your vote was counted as you cast it, or the profits of voting machine manufacturers?"
He says that the manufacturers of voting machines are hiding behind a wall of trade secrets. Their message is "Trust us."
He asks, do the "trade secrets" in our election system machines have no more importance than the formulas for Coca Cola or MacDonald's BBQ sauce?
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What I presumed was a whitewash (touchscreens bad, optiscans good) is not. I was wrong. I presumed too much from the bits and pieces posted at DU, before I viewed the report.
Further, it is a VERY hard-hitting report. It questions the corporate PRIVATIZATION of our election system. No other news report has done this. If they report on it at all, they report about "problems" and "concerns" and "testing"--never the BIG PROBLEM: corporate secrecy. It's the thing I'm always yelling about. What do you EXPECT when you have corporations 'counting' all our votes with 'TRADE SECRET' code?
Well, you can pretty much expect a shit-for-brains traitor president, unjust war, boffo war profiteering, multiple tax cuts for the rich, big no-bid military and "homeland security" contracts, pervasive domestic spying, a rubber stamp Congress--"D" or "R," it doesn't seem to matter--and the U.S.A. degraded into a "banana republic," where your job is to shut up and work for shit wages, buy poisonous products manufactured in other slave-labor countries, and offer up your children as cannon fodder for corporate resource wars.
That's what PRIVATE, SECRET, CORPORATE vote 'counting' MEANS. That's what it was FOR. Dan Rather doesn't say it (--although he comes close)--but I'm saying it. And I am astounded to see these facts exposed by such a major journalist. Maybe it's Dan Rather's revenge for the 'swift-boating' HE got. He can just speak the truth now, no holds barred. His report calls into question the ENTIRE corporate-run election system--from the "hanging chads" to the "trade secret" electronics. He calls the legitimacy of the 2000 election into question (WHY did Florida get the bad punchcard ballots? was it just a big snafu? was it deliberate?). And he calls into question every election SINCE THEN--all conducted on inferior, unreliable machines, containing "trade secret" code.
I'm impressed. I'm amazed. I'm RELIEVED that these facts are finally getting "out there," and that the American people are being alerted and warned AT LAST.
I urge you to view this investigative report, and spread it far and wide. It's available at as downloadable video at
http://www.hd.net/drr227.htmland (in three parts--half way down the page) at:
http://www.bradblog.com/COMPLETE TRANSCRIPTS HERE:
http://election-reform.org/dan_rather.htmlEMAIL to write to Dan Rather and the producers: Viewer@HD.net
(www.HD.net/DanRather)
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Caveat: I've described this report from hearing it, and taking quick notes. I haven't reviewed the transcripts yet. I believe I've faithfully described what it says, but there could be mistakes. Apologies to all, if there are. But I was so excited by this report, I wanted to re-focus DU's attention on it right away.
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